I always wonder what people mean when they use the term "Judeo-Christian." In the context you used it, I think "Christian" would have been clearer. Jews didn't found this country.
I guess what I’m wanting to understand is why you think a lack of belief in God necessarily entails an empty life. It’s just been long enough since I was religious that I can’t relate to that notion that my life is missing something without a belief in God. My life feels very meaningful without any appeal to anything supernatural.
I recall reading an interesting article a few months back that found that while traditional Buddhist practice made people more community minded, the "secular" Buddhism practiced in the west has been found to make people more selfish and less generous. This is because it's not only stripped of the supernatural woo, but also any underlying moral foundation. So something which is supposedly about releasing you from your illusion of self actually makes you more egotistical.
It isn't just a question of divorcing meditation practices from ethical teachings, although that is important. At least with regards to Buddhism, everything is embedded in community practice. Being 'attuned to the philosophy and ethics' isn't really a thing you do on your own. You practice in community with others. That's how you get the philosophy and ethics. I can't speak to Yoga, but I wonder if something similar isn't going on there.
This is my biggest problem with the concept of "self-care." I mean, I think people should take care of themselves, of course, but it often seems that self-care is the explanation for why you don't need to care about anyone besides yourself.
It's like an inverted version of libertarian rugged individualism. All experience is individualized, but instead of rewarding yourself for being rugged, you're rewarding yourself for vulnerability.
While it is hard to completely divorce his suicide now from his critiques of mindfulness and C.B.T. (and I think he could be too dogmatic in his critiques - they both have individual uses, though can be weilded by corporations in bad faith) Mark Fisher wrote a lot about this.
Astrology is a power tool. A tool that can be wielded to give one power over others.
How? Well—I know this was in fun—but, Astrology can be used to classify a person, or group. This allows the [ab]user to develop a hierarchy. Thus, one could say 'I need someone responsible, I'd never hire an Air-Sign.' So power was provided, and misused.
But this is the defensive posture you'd expect from a Cancer-Man, now isn't it? Which is exactly what my astrologer neighbor would say.
As a Unitarian any debates I'd get into about the existence of God would become tediously semantic... but I'd like to think a lot of people use Tarot as a storytelling tool, effectively.
I think irrationality's often good for art. Most socialist realist art was kitsch at best.
The problem comes when people try to make arguments for political or ethical positions based on hookum, rather than hookum per se.
I suppose this is an unusual position, but I do not think the existence of god matters even a little bit.
If god is not real, then life carries on as it does now. If god is real, it also carries on as it does now. God's reality wouldn't spring into existence the moment we make such a discovery (assuming such a discovery were possible), and so we've been living as a species for 100,000 years under the same supernatural conditions.
I don't see why that would substantially change because we discovered that there is proof of a god or gods.
Belief seems to be the real aspect that influences behavior. And the believers will never be convinced by evidence that god is not real. They would also always be convinced that their god is the god that got proven to be scientifically real. And their belief and behavior would likely look identical to how it currently is.
I think that goes in line with my statement that belief in god matters more than god's existence.
If someone had a way to prove the absence of god, Scalia would not have changed his views because it's his belief that matters. No amount of proof would have been sufficient to make him not believe.
The existence of god or lack thereof did not make Scalia the person he was.
Note that of the 'major works' of new atheism, Dennett's Breaking the Spell was most aimed at understanding religious belief (very little at the arguments over theism) and how to deal with it in the contemporary age.
The existence or non-existence of God is very important if you are a theist, but less so if you are a deist.
Theism (I use this term not as a pejorative, but in its descriptive theological sense) posits a fundamentally top-down view of the universe. Everything flows from one source, which is cogent, has an agenda, and is greater than the sum of everything else.
This is the opposite of what we know about the universe. The universe started as energy and particles, and those particles gradually coalesced into larger objects. This is a bottom-up process.
My quip about whether I believe in God is, "Not yet," because if a god is to exist the universe hasn't matured enough to host one, at least as far as we know.
The theistic worldview is backwards in that it describes the arrow of causality as pointing from the top down, rather than from the bottom up. This affects lots of adjacent beliefs, like the belief that one is inferior, obedience to authority, and in the case of monotheism a hostility to different ideas.
It's very important to them but it's also unprovable.
It's their belief that determines their behavior. Even if we proved without a shadow of a doubt that god was real, but it was only Wotun who was real, christians would not be learning Old Norse and converting. They would insist that the proof only applied to their god.
Jokes aside, once a tarot card reader at an insufferable hipster party in Bushwick accused me of stealing her money, CALLED the police on me, and then when I was like, "Dude. Why would I steal your $25, I have a job (this was when I had a job) and she was like, "ARE YOU SAYING TAROT CARD READING ISN'T A JOB!?!?!?"
Did you, or anyone else on here, ever find out how these psychics and tarot readers sometimes have store fronts in super expensive real estate areas? Like there are places with super expensive boutiques and also a psychic storefront. There's something else going on in these storefronts, right?
I went 30 years on this earth without ever hearing anything about Mercury being in retrograde and somehow have heard it dozens of times in the last 2. I would like to go back.
Unfortunately a lot of today's mysticism comes not from evangelicals, but from the academy (power posing, priming) and the workplace (mindfulness, non-big 5 personality tests).
I don't know that I would call power posing/priming/personality tests "mysticism." They are arguably based on bad science, but its still science. You can (and people have) try to replicate the power posing experiment and determine whether it is real. Mysticism tends to involve non-falsifiable claims.
This isn't to say that we don't need skepticism when it come to this sort of claim, it is just that its a somewhat different problem for skepticism to tackle.
Klaus, I would love it if you wrote a post on priming. It just seems like all researchers in the fields of psychology and sociology make an assumption that, say, reading a list of words alters our thoughts enough to provoke wildly differing responses to later stimuli. This just seems crazy to me. Is there actually any evidence that priming works? Or is everyone assuming it works and using this (dubious imho) method to produce their results?
Semantic priming is a very robust effect but it is properly the domain of (psycho)linguistics. What it looks like in practice is that if you flash the word 'doctor' at people too fast for them to consciously register having seen it, they will on average be quicker to judge whether 'nurse' is a word or non-work than 'aardvark'. You may note that this is not nearly as sweeping or broadly relevant as the non-semantic version.
Hi Mari - There is a lot of really old work on memory that shows things similar to priming that are very well established. This is because when we form new memories or learn stuff, we are also organizing information. For example, if you are recalling animals, its easier to continue to bring up more animals than it is to alternate between recalling animals and say, 90's politicians (the categories don't matter). You can call this a form of priming. Most of this research was established in the 70's (I think).
But when people propose things like carrying around an ice pack makes you emotionally cooler toward people, be skeptical. Basically, any "priming" that was established in the aughts.
Looking back at the Bush years (the earliest era that I was politically self-aware enough to follow the rhetoric, since I was too busy playing in the sandbox at recess to care about the Yugoslav war or the fall of the Berlin Wall), it does kinda seem like most of the Atheism vs Christianity arguments and polemics were proxy wars. Arguing whether or not God exists was what people did instead of arguing about gay rights and the War on Terror. Obviously, the best argument against gay marriage and lifestyle is that it is a taboo, aka, God Said So. Likewise, the justification of invading Muslim countries in self-defense was best done by crusader rhetoric, aka, God Said So (it certainly wasn’t justified by rational self interest).
So New Atheism was never (at least in my conception of it) about the metaphysical question of where the universe came from if not from a Creator God. It was an attack on the justifications that underpinned the whole ethos of neoconservatism at home and abroad.
And the moment the Bush era was over, the sword of New Atheism was beaten into a plowshare and abandoned, because who cares about debating theology now that gays can marry and Obama now justified the War on Terror by claiming it was just rational self-interest to drone strike Afghan rednecks and Iraqi gangbangers?
A bit older than you (a few years older than Freddie) but what always rankled me about the "New Atheists" is they weren't interested in debunking the idea of the divine, the supernatural, etc. They were interested in disproving Christianity - or maybe more broadly, the modern Abrahamic concept of God. It was the exact inverse of what I experienced with some Evangelicals, who seemed to believe that if "proof" for "God" could be found, ipso facto Christianity must be true. There are an uncountable number of potential ultimate realities, many of which humanity has not (and indeed cannot) comprehend, so arguing in strict binaries seemed childish to me even when I was barely out of childhood myself.
I think that in many ways the New Atheists saw themselves as heirs to the radical empiricism of the Pragmatics (like James, Peirce, Dewey), where the truth, and importance, of any statement could be traced back to its practical consequences. Having abstract notions of the divine or supernatural is perfectly fine, as long as those notions remain divorced from one's real-world ethics. But Christianity (and the rest of the Abrahamic religions) are the opposite of that; they cite the existence of a God, without any real-world evidence, yet use it to justify a broad-based system of action. Insofar as belief in a Christian God has real-world consequences, it's an important topic for debate.
Growing up evangelical has gifted me with a surplus of literary references that I may deploy at will, secure in the knowledge that I will never run low on ammo.
Speaking of ammo and the Bible, my husband sent me a pic of a colleague's bulletin board recently: it had a cat mom sign and a picture of a gun where the spine of a Bible was the barrel.
Politics are basically fashion with a veneer of gravitas slapped on it. Around 2008 when you wrote that piece atheism was talking out of fashion. It became profoundly uncool, people were as embarrassed about it as they were about Von Dutch. People want these things to be deep when they are not. Now astrology is in and to a lesser extent so is "tradcath" LARPing. It's a fad as much as pogs and slap bracelets and will end up the same way.
I don't want to have such a contemptuous tone, but it's hard. We are social creatures and want to both fit in and thrive in whatever social milieus we inhabit. No one is immune, this is simply how it works. You could even see (rightly) see the restriction of all kind of hokum and nonsense as the inevitable overreacting, a way to make sure everyone knows you have nothing on common with new atheists. A little like the transition from massive, baggy pants to skinny jeans.
This is a bit askew from your point, but I enjoy astrology. I tend to think of the human brain’s propensity towards ritual, magical thinking and superstition as like water: it will always find someplace to go. Most (not all) people have an inclination towards wanting to do little things in their life that make them feel better despite no factual evidence - that leads people to religion, and also leads towards woo, and I think mild woo is less damaging.
In my mind, receiving essentially a daily writing prompt to think about my behavior (a horoscope) is less societally damaging than aligning myself with a religious body that pushes regressive legislation and covers up sexual abuse, and it scratches that itch for ritual and superstition. I’d honestly rather the majority of people believe in star sign nonsense than in Jesus, because aside from your typical capitalist commodification, astrology is pretty harmless in comparison. But it has to be mild woo! As soon as you’re using a star chart to determine whether to give your kid chemotherapy, you’re in the danger zone.
Basically, imo, most woo is mild. Most religion is mild, too, but it fortifies a very powerful cultural and political arm, and that makes it worse. To me your piece begs the question that it’s “unhealthy” to entertain the idea that your date of birth influences your mood (especially when there’s evidence that the season of your birth influences your early childhood educational attainment - maybe there’s some underlying truth to December babies being hooligans on the playground). Maybe silly horoscope rituals are a healthier outlet for some common human impulses than the alternatives.
It's so interesting to me that the skeptics of religion always target Christianity and Catholicism specifically. Your comments about regressive legislation and sexual abuse makes this point and Freddie's tradcath comment. I'm not picking on you. I see this theme across the board by the atheists, agnostics or anti-religion folks. It's become the only acceptable bigotry. Muslims and Jews (non-reform at least) oppose gay marriage and many are opposed to abortion. I won't opine on the theological arguments for these positions because I'm not knowledgeable enough but the idea that religion is regressive is tiresome and also not always borne out by history. History and change are not linear.
"It's so interesting to me that the skeptics of religion always target Christianity and Catholicism specifically."
This is because Christianity and Catholicism are still seen as having a measure of political and cultural power. Sociologists of religion have long defined a "cult" as "a religion without political power." Back when the Jim Jones' Peoples' Temple was a force in San Francisco area politics, local reporters referred to the Reverend Jones as a "religious leader" and not a "cult leader", and the People's Temple was a "religion" and nothing but. This changed abruptly, when the Temple backed the wrong horse in a mayoral race.
Similarly, I suspect that the working definition of "woo" is "religious belief without organization, and consequently, without political power".
On Saturday I attended my uncle's memorial service. It was the first time I've been in a church building in 5 or so years. I felt comforted by the gentle support of the believers, and I felt their sincerity deeply. The old songs and scriptures (selected for the sombre moment) were beautiful. But their belief felt alien, incomprehensible as literally true, even though I used to think the same as them.
During the service, a huge storm rolled in. Loud thunderclaps shook the chapel. While the preacher shared a word of encouragement, a water leak suddenly burst through the ceiling in the hall. Later, when the Spanish-speaking church minister was talking of hope, everyone's phones started loudly beeping with a flash flood warning.
The religious could take all of those facts and discern the presence of God. The woo could take all those facts and discern the movement of spiritual energy. To me, they were just things that happened. Proof that life on the surface of this planet teems on, that the tadpoles in our backyard wouldn't dry up, and that my ephemeral grief is real, if not invested with any universal meaning.
"I felt comforted by the gentle support of the believers, and I felt their sincerity deeply. The old songs and scriptures (selected for the sombre moment) were beautiful. But their belief felt alien, incomprehensible as literally true"
Nicely said. This is exactly my experience of religious ceremonies: I feel the increase in community and comfort that the shared ritual brings, but considering the underlying beliefs as empirically true is indeed incomprehensible.
I have an otherwise intelligent friend who was using Astrology to pick stocks in the 90's. It was 'working' for a while, so he bought on-margin. When the reckoning came, he had to sell basically everything he owned to cover. I sold a guitar back to him later.
Not that I think Astrology is real, but I think the lesson here is don't do stock picking on margin. He probably would have had the same fate if he based his stock-picking on CNBC.
My father used to claim he would win his office football pool using a random number generator. I never understood how that would be ~better~ than an alternative, but I certainly believed odds makers were good enough that it was going to be as good as an alternative.
The more efficient markets get, the less likely it is that an individual investor can beat average return. Nassim Taleb et al have shown that there are always a select few in the tails of the distribution who beat the market for a few years. Then they regress to mean performance. They're not actually special - the Big Secret is "buy-and-hold while the line is going up".
I do take issue with the drones chanting "TINA" and "you can't time the market". When there are clear technical indicators the bear is in the campground, it's ok to pull out of equities for a year or so. Seems like there's a great American tradition of watching your 401k decline like there are no other options.
Unfortunately, I don't think we are going to get a reinvigorated skeptical movement any time soon. Instead, I think that we are going to see a splintering of it over transgender issues, as there seems to be a growing divide in the movement over which side is really following the science.
Maybe the Kennedy v. Bremerton School Dist. and/or Dobbs will refocus things.
Realistically, I tend to think that both sides of this debate have a tendency to get out over a limb on this. I've been following (and was specifically thinking of) the ongoing debate between Jesse Singal and Science Based Medicine. I've been a long time listener of Skeptics Guide but am relatively sympathetic to Singal as well (I'm a paid subscriber to BARPod). I think that both sides see themselves as acting like skeptics in this debate, with the SBM side seeing Singal's arguments as "skeptical" in the vein of climate skeptics, where the hole poking is intended more to obfuscate than clarify.
My personal view on this is that at lot of this is a lot less about science than either side thinks, with both sides talking past one another (sometimes intentionally, sometimes less so).
I do think that pro-trans rights side is probably a bit overly credulous when it comes to stuff like youth transition, even if it does appear that, in most instances, youth transition is the best option and it is at least plausible that being overaggressive on this is causing less harm in total than being overly conservative. I also understand the concerns about loose criticism providing fodder for people who are truly transphobic, rather than just concerned that we aren't making a mistake in our treatment approach. However, I think there is some effort to put a thumb on research in this area to avoid anything that could be used by the anti-trans side that is risking missing important research that would actually help (or avoid harm to) trans people.
"it is at least plausible that being overaggressive on this is causing less harm in total than being overly conservative."
I would recommend You wait for the CASS report coming outta the UK before You go out on that limb. But if You go by Sweden outlawing gender-affirming care, and France (and can't recall, Finland?) pulling back, then I'd say the odds go the other way.
The so-called science that not affirming care leads to suicide. LOW quality study. According to actual scientists.
It seems like the vast majority of people who transition as teens remain transitioned and are glad that they transitioned. (I've seen this as an actual study somewhere, but I don't have it handy). There are obviously confounding factors, including changes the cohort of people who are now transitioning. But I think that is enough to say that it is at least plausible.
Note that evidence that transitioning/transitioning early causes medical issues wouldn't really change this. The ultimate question is whether the people's lives are subjectively better, and medical issues are just one factor that go into this.
When You're talking about lack of bone density, possible destroying capability of orgasm and causing sterility, I don't think it's so easy to just brush off. But, fact is, there just now starting to investigate scientifically. That should-a been done prior.
AFAIK, most-a it is just a scam from the Techno-Medical Complex. Money still talks loudest.
If I offer to treat people's headaches by lopping off both legs, and a decade from now, 9/10 people who got the treatment are happy they got it, I think it is at least plausible that it is doing more harm than good.
"This is frequently chalked up to living in an increasingly stressful era; I have never seen satisfying proof that there’s anything more stressful about now as compared to, say, George W. Bush’s United States, but thus the story goes."
That wouldn't be unprecedented. WWI and the 1918 pandemic are often credited with a big uptick in spiritualism.
As for comparisons to W's America, you had a quip a while ago that I liked so much I wrote it down: "In recent decades it's felt like everything has been undermined and nothing has been built. We churn out college graduates who can critique everything but create nothing." For whatever combination of reasons--polarization; disinformation and social-media echo chambers; America's weakening economy and obviously declining influence in the world; formerly revered historical figures being (rightly or wrongly) rejected as racist monsters, etc--the feeling that everything is falling apart and circling the drain is, to me at least, much stronger than it was during W's tenure. Back then, if you thought we should go to war with Iraq, you had a cause to believe in, and if you didn't, well, you had a cause to fight for as well. Now we all seem to hate each other (online, at least), and institutions like legacy media, the public health establishment, and the police have all lost the more-or-less default trust that most people once placed in them.
When everything in the visible world seems to be slipping through your fingers like sand, a lot of people will turn to the invisible world, which conveniently can be anything you want it to be. It's probably related to the decline of traditional religion as well--people generally need to believe in something, and if they stop going to church they will still fill the hole with tarot or Q-anon or politics.
Trump was way more disruptive than Bush. Quick example on police reform: John Ashcroft’s DOJ helped to create a consent decree with the city of Cincinnati in 2001 after years of police brutality there, and he was generally supportive of police reform (though he shredded desegregation). Basically, continuity with Janet Reno, which means, things have to get really really bad, but the DOJ will support local police reform efforts. Jeff Sessions shredded all Eric Holder’s consent decrees with fucked up police departments, and worked to dramatically curtail the ability of the DOJ to investigate police departments. The world of 2016-2020 was pretty fucked up, and we’re still living under the specter of it returning in an even more brutal form. This doesn’t excuse the fecklessness of Biden or Clinton or Obama or Bush.
Matt Taibbi has written pretty extensively on that particular topic:
"A few years ago, George W. Bush was on track to be remembered as one of the worst presidents of all time, if not the worst. He was both more disdainful and more ignorant of the law than Nixon, his arsonist economic stewardship was rivaled only by Hoover, and intellectwise he made Chester A. Arthur look like Copernicus. He was also a worse and more destructive president than Donald Trump, and it wasn’t close. Trump talked big, but it was Bush who actually smashed norms on a grand scale, from international law to human rights to adherence to the most basic constitutional principles, in pursuit of policies that Brown University just estimated cost $8 trillion and led to 900,000 deaths."
Idk Taibbi sounds kind of unhinged there? It’s why I don’t read him. I’m not a fan of Assange AND I’m not a fan of Cheney AND I’m not a fan of Trump, because all of them are openly contemptuous of democracy and the rule of law. I don’t think equating vaccine passports (which would seriously have made all of our lives easier/better) with Gitmo, or drone strikes, makes a ton of sense. I get the idea of being a HARD civil libertarian, but taking that stance and then somehow exempting Trump from it is very weird. Yes, Trump was too incompetent to be a real authoritarian. But he did a Muslim ban? And put kids in cages? I’m down with Taibbi’s consistent contempt for Russiagate and “misinformation,” but the rest of it is bad.
The stupidity of the idea that vaccine passports could have ever helped fight COVID is beyond words. Our existing vaccines do not stop or even hinder spread, they just reduce the likelihood of severe illness and death.
Taibbi regularly shits on Trump as well. He is not a fan. He just (correctly) also shits on the idea that Trump is the worst president ever to such an extent that we need to act like there's a national emergency every single day he's still alive. Bush was a lot worse, and there was and is nowhere near the level of revulsion for him in the hearts of America's sad journalistic community.
I think what’s more interesting is what Freddie identified - that irrationality is a deep and persistent tendency of humans. And that’s interesting - why would it benefit a human to be irrational? Wouldn’t more rational humans have out competed the ones who looked for the rising of Venus as being an auspicious time to hunt deer?
My guess is it’s three factors:
- The ascribing of motivation. That was probably a great evolutionary advance, the ability to assume that other humans had motivations, and being able to guess the future based on modeling those motivations. It was probably such a great advance that it goes a little too far, and we ascribe motivations to the rock you stubbed your toe on, the sky for raining on you, and it’s a short step from there to rock and sky gods that you didn’t propitiate that morning.
- Being over-biased toward correlation. Maybe deer really *did* come out more when Venus was rising. A little extra light, time of the year… finding correlations, subtle ones, was probably very advantageous. But when you’re looking for correlations, you are naturally going to ‘find’ some that aren’t so - and thus, boys born under the light of Venus are foretold to be great hunters.
- The tuning of reality. Meaning, our sense of reality and reasoning is probably best when life is short and brutal, particularly if we get to observe it happening to others. Those with kids will sympathize with the observation that one incident of a burned finger on a stove is more effective than a hundred warnings not to play around the stove. By making our day-to-day lives so much safer and nicer, we’ve inadvertently set up an environment where believing in woo woo is mostly harmless. You don’t melt your fingertips off believing in a horoscope.
I don’t see us being able to alter the first two factors to get us more rational humans. And the third… I don’t want a miserable, cruel life to “educate” people. Civilization is all about making life less brutal and unfair. Perhaps more woo woo is part of the price of civilization?
Religion is a social phenomena. It's not about individual belief, it's something you do, and it's something which only makes sense within a group. Indeed, if you look at many cultures historically (like say ancient Rome) they were pretty explicit that they didn't really care what you believed (and too much belief was a bad thing) they wanted you to show up in temples and make offerings to the gods.
I also think you're over-estimating the level of individual irrationality that people have. Back in the 2000s the idea that religion was based upon hyperactive agency detection was common, but it's fallen from favor more recently. Part of this is studies of people from traditional societies have found that they really have no issue separating their mythology from day-to-day requirements when it comes to survival. Indeed, across all societies we see roughly the same peppering of natural skeptics and apathetic people we have in the modern west.
The new idea regarding the foundation of religion is that the foundation is in the natural trance states that the human mind can fall into - particularly when taking part in a group activity involving music and/or rituals. We found the doorway into altered states of consciousness, and built up a mythology (and eventually a theology) over millennia to help explain the feeling of transcendence.
Roman religious practice was about providing the proper reverence for the gods. The gods didn't "care" if you hated them, they "cared" if you made public appearances in temples and did your civic duty. Indeed, the term religio meant a sense of moral obligation/duty, and was contrasted with superstisio, which was their term for doing or believing more regarding the gods than was necessary. Christianity was of course superstisio...one reason the Roman old guard hated Christianity was because Christians took religion way too seriously.
In some ways the Roman practice isn't that different from the historic Chinese religious practices, which place great emphasis on things like filial piety, which we don't really take as being religious today.
It's interesting then that Christianity replaced paganism in Europe. This was done in large part through the sword, but I also think that religions that demand more of people fill a need.
Ah, that’s interesting regarding studies of more traditional societies, and the idea that religion is more of a socially approved trance state. I never, ever found religion compelling, despite being exposed to it repeatedly while growing up - joining something because everybody else was doing it felt… uncomfortable? Silly? Something to be ducked out of with the minimal public social gesture so you wouldn’t be noticed as standing out? And I’ve never gotten close to a trance state that I can tell. Perhaps I wasn’t built to believe.
I wonder about that distribution of skeptics & apathetic people you reference. Do you have a source or a book you’d recommend?
I experienced it once in a dream when I was around 20. It was a really weird feeling. I was someone else in the dream other than myself, and the dream content was semi-mystical anyway. But then the walls between myself and other people came down, and my entire dream life (past and future) flashed before my eyes, along with the lives of those in my family. I felt a sense of oneness and as if everything was right in the world and in its proper place. Then I woke up into boring old reality.
I wouldn't call religion the "price" for civilization, more like a necessary component. Constitutions, laws, states, they're all fake made up stories we've created, in our heads, from nothing but our imaginations just like religion. If I were to come down from a mountain with some commandments I made up to get the tribe to behave it makes sense that I should also make up a story about how they came from some higher power. It protects me somewhat from being thrown into the volcano, and also gives the rules a chance to survive after I die. The question is can we as fallible humans ever follow rules conjured up by same fallible humans without some sort backstop higher power behind the curtain. Maybe, but it sure seems the successful rules seem to require it. And it also seems that as our rule making gets more sophisticated so does religion. They seem to go hand in hand that way.
I always wonder what people mean when they use the term "Judeo-Christian." In the context you used it, I think "Christian" would have been clearer. Jews didn't found this country.
We actually don't have the New Testament in Judaism. Neither do we call it the Old Testament. What you're describing is a Christian viewpoint.
“I personally couldn't imagine being an atheist. Seems like such an empty existence.“
What is it that you think atheists actually believe?
I guess what I’m wanting to understand is why you think a lack of belief in God necessarily entails an empty life. It’s just been long enough since I was religious that I can’t relate to that notion that my life is missing something without a belief in God. My life feels very meaningful without any appeal to anything supernatural.
I recall reading an interesting article a few months back that found that while traditional Buddhist practice made people more community minded, the "secular" Buddhism practiced in the west has been found to make people more selfish and less generous. This is because it's not only stripped of the supernatural woo, but also any underlying moral foundation. So something which is supposedly about releasing you from your illusion of self actually makes you more egotistical.
It isn't just a question of divorcing meditation practices from ethical teachings, although that is important. At least with regards to Buddhism, everything is embedded in community practice. Being 'attuned to the philosophy and ethics' isn't really a thing you do on your own. You practice in community with others. That's how you get the philosophy and ethics. I can't speak to Yoga, but I wonder if something similar isn't going on there.
Long time past I read that One can transmit the practices of the East, but One can't transmit the culture that supported it.
First time I had no clue what they were talking about. "Of course not."
This is my biggest problem with the concept of "self-care." I mean, I think people should take care of themselves, of course, but it often seems that self-care is the explanation for why you don't need to care about anyone besides yourself.
It's like an inverted version of libertarian rugged individualism. All experience is individualized, but instead of rewarding yourself for being rugged, you're rewarding yourself for vulnerability.
While it is hard to completely divorce his suicide now from his critiques of mindfulness and C.B.T. (and I think he could be too dogmatic in his critiques - they both have individual uses, though can be weilded by corporations in bad faith) Mark Fisher wrote a lot about this.
This is just what a Gemini would write. Air-sign motherfuckers.
Best response yet, I nearly spit out my coffee when I read this. Hilarious!
Nailed it
Astrology is a power tool. A tool that can be wielded to give one power over others.
How? Well—I know this was in fun—but, Astrology can be used to classify a person, or group. This allows the [ab]user to develop a hierarchy. Thus, one could say 'I need someone responsible, I'd never hire an Air-Sign.' So power was provided, and misused.
But this is the defensive posture you'd expect from a Cancer-Man, now isn't it? Which is exactly what my astrologer neighbor would say.
I hate astrology and this made me hoot with laughter.
#Scorpio
You are doing what C S Lewis would call “Bulverism.”
S0 true...
As a Unitarian any debates I'd get into about the existence of God would become tediously semantic... but I'd like to think a lot of people use Tarot as a storytelling tool, effectively.
I think irrationality's often good for art. Most socialist realist art was kitsch at best.
The problem comes when people try to make arguments for political or ethical positions based on hookum, rather than hookum per se.
Our amazing brains do all sorts of things to cope; rationality is fantastic for some things, but not for art and not necessarily for comfort.
I suppose this is an unusual position, but I do not think the existence of god matters even a little bit.
If god is not real, then life carries on as it does now. If god is real, it also carries on as it does now. God's reality wouldn't spring into existence the moment we make such a discovery (assuming such a discovery were possible), and so we've been living as a species for 100,000 years under the same supernatural conditions.
I don't see why that would substantially change because we discovered that there is proof of a god or gods.
Belief seems to be the real aspect that influences behavior. And the believers will never be convinced by evidence that god is not real. They would also always be convinced that their god is the god that got proven to be scientifically real. And their belief and behavior would likely look identical to how it currently is.
Antonin Scalia on line 2
I think that goes in line with my statement that belief in god matters more than god's existence.
If someone had a way to prove the absence of god, Scalia would not have changed his views because it's his belief that matters. No amount of proof would have been sufficient to make him not believe.
The existence of god or lack thereof did not make Scalia the person he was.
Note that of the 'major works' of new atheism, Dennett's Breaking the Spell was most aimed at understanding religious belief (very little at the arguments over theism) and how to deal with it in the contemporary age.
The existence or non-existence of God is very important if you are a theist, but less so if you are a deist.
Theism (I use this term not as a pejorative, but in its descriptive theological sense) posits a fundamentally top-down view of the universe. Everything flows from one source, which is cogent, has an agenda, and is greater than the sum of everything else.
This is the opposite of what we know about the universe. The universe started as energy and particles, and those particles gradually coalesced into larger objects. This is a bottom-up process.
My quip about whether I believe in God is, "Not yet," because if a god is to exist the universe hasn't matured enough to host one, at least as far as we know.
The theistic worldview is backwards in that it describes the arrow of causality as pointing from the top down, rather than from the bottom up. This affects lots of adjacent beliefs, like the belief that one is inferior, obedience to authority, and in the case of monotheism a hostility to different ideas.
It's very important to them but it's also unprovable.
It's their belief that determines their behavior. Even if we proved without a shadow of a doubt that god was real, but it was only Wotun who was real, christians would not be learning Old Norse and converting. They would insist that the proof only applied to their god.
Reminds me of Alexander Bard's ideas around Syntheism - the idea that humanity will eventually create God at some point in the future.
I think you could argue that we already have. A long time ago.
Jokes aside, once a tarot card reader at an insufferable hipster party in Bushwick accused me of stealing her money, CALLED the police on me, and then when I was like, "Dude. Why would I steal your $25, I have a job (this was when I had a job) and she was like, "ARE YOU SAYING TAROT CARD READING ISN'T A JOB!?!?!?"
Don't get mad, get even. How many tarot readers accept checks? Report her to the IRS for not declaring all her income.
It’s a job in the same sense that running a 3 card monte game is a job.
Did you, or anyone else on here, ever find out how these psychics and tarot readers sometimes have store fronts in super expensive real estate areas? Like there are places with super expensive boutiques and also a psychic storefront. There's something else going on in these storefronts, right?
Sex work duh
I went 30 years on this earth without ever hearing anything about Mercury being in retrograde and somehow have heard it dozens of times in the last 2. I would like to go back.
Unfortunately a lot of today's mysticism comes not from evangelicals, but from the academy (power posing, priming) and the workplace (mindfulness, non-big 5 personality tests).
I don't know that I would call power posing/priming/personality tests "mysticism." They are arguably based on bad science, but its still science. You can (and people have) try to replicate the power posing experiment and determine whether it is real. Mysticism tends to involve non-falsifiable claims.
This isn't to say that we don't need skepticism when it come to this sort of claim, it is just that its a somewhat different problem for skepticism to tackle.
Klaus, I would love it if you wrote a post on priming. It just seems like all researchers in the fields of psychology and sociology make an assumption that, say, reading a list of words alters our thoughts enough to provoke wildly differing responses to later stimuli. This just seems crazy to me. Is there actually any evidence that priming works? Or is everyone assuming it works and using this (dubious imho) method to produce their results?
Jesse Singals book, The Quick Fix, covers this ground so well that I don't have much else to add
Semantic priming is a very robust effect but it is properly the domain of (psycho)linguistics. What it looks like in practice is that if you flash the word 'doctor' at people too fast for them to consciously register having seen it, they will on average be quicker to judge whether 'nurse' is a word or non-work than 'aardvark'. You may note that this is not nearly as sweeping or broadly relevant as the non-semantic version.
But interesting nonetheless!
Studied a bit of this for my masters. Are you in the field?
Once upon a time I was a psycho/neurolinguist, yes, mostly speech perception.
Hi Mari - There is a lot of really old work on memory that shows things similar to priming that are very well established. This is because when we form new memories or learn stuff, we are also organizing information. For example, if you are recalling animals, its easier to continue to bring up more animals than it is to alternate between recalling animals and say, 90's politicians (the categories don't matter). You can call this a form of priming. Most of this research was established in the 70's (I think).
But when people propose things like carrying around an ice pack makes you emotionally cooler toward people, be skeptical. Basically, any "priming" that was established in the aughts.
Ah ok - JR's got it. :)
Thanks! This is helpful!
Looking back at the Bush years (the earliest era that I was politically self-aware enough to follow the rhetoric, since I was too busy playing in the sandbox at recess to care about the Yugoslav war or the fall of the Berlin Wall), it does kinda seem like most of the Atheism vs Christianity arguments and polemics were proxy wars. Arguing whether or not God exists was what people did instead of arguing about gay rights and the War on Terror. Obviously, the best argument against gay marriage and lifestyle is that it is a taboo, aka, God Said So. Likewise, the justification of invading Muslim countries in self-defense was best done by crusader rhetoric, aka, God Said So (it certainly wasn’t justified by rational self interest).
So New Atheism was never (at least in my conception of it) about the metaphysical question of where the universe came from if not from a Creator God. It was an attack on the justifications that underpinned the whole ethos of neoconservatism at home and abroad.
And the moment the Bush era was over, the sword of New Atheism was beaten into a plowshare and abandoned, because who cares about debating theology now that gays can marry and Obama now justified the War on Terror by claiming it was just rational self-interest to drone strike Afghan rednecks and Iraqi gangbangers?
A bit older than you (a few years older than Freddie) but what always rankled me about the "New Atheists" is they weren't interested in debunking the idea of the divine, the supernatural, etc. They were interested in disproving Christianity - or maybe more broadly, the modern Abrahamic concept of God. It was the exact inverse of what I experienced with some Evangelicals, who seemed to believe that if "proof" for "God" could be found, ipso facto Christianity must be true. There are an uncountable number of potential ultimate realities, many of which humanity has not (and indeed cannot) comprehend, so arguing in strict binaries seemed childish to me even when I was barely out of childhood myself.
I think that in many ways the New Atheists saw themselves as heirs to the radical empiricism of the Pragmatics (like James, Peirce, Dewey), where the truth, and importance, of any statement could be traced back to its practical consequences. Having abstract notions of the divine or supernatural is perfectly fine, as long as those notions remain divorced from one's real-world ethics. But Christianity (and the rest of the Abrahamic religions) are the opposite of that; they cite the existence of a God, without any real-world evidence, yet use it to justify a broad-based system of action. Insofar as belief in a Christian God has real-world consequences, it's an important topic for debate.
Props for the Isaiah reference.
Growing up evangelical has gifted me with a surplus of literary references that I may deploy at will, secure in the knowledge that I will never run low on ammo.
Speaking of ammo and the Bible, my husband sent me a pic of a colleague's bulletin board recently: it had a cat mom sign and a picture of a gun where the spine of a Bible was the barrel.
https://youtu.be/O_3_-UrhZH0
Politics are basically fashion with a veneer of gravitas slapped on it. Around 2008 when you wrote that piece atheism was talking out of fashion. It became profoundly uncool, people were as embarrassed about it as they were about Von Dutch. People want these things to be deep when they are not. Now astrology is in and to a lesser extent so is "tradcath" LARPing. It's a fad as much as pogs and slap bracelets and will end up the same way.
I don't want to have such a contemptuous tone, but it's hard. We are social creatures and want to both fit in and thrive in whatever social milieus we inhabit. No one is immune, this is simply how it works. You could even see (rightly) see the restriction of all kind of hokum and nonsense as the inevitable overreacting, a way to make sure everyone knows you have nothing on common with new atheists. A little like the transition from massive, baggy pants to skinny jeans.
I think we can all agree on one thing, regardless of beliefs: ultra low rise jeans should never come back.
I worship at the church of the high waist trouser.
I hated those so much
Can we please bring back bell bottoms though? I hit puberty when those were in style and all the hot girls were wearing them ...
Yes to bell bottoms! Remember elephant bells?
This is a bit askew from your point, but I enjoy astrology. I tend to think of the human brain’s propensity towards ritual, magical thinking and superstition as like water: it will always find someplace to go. Most (not all) people have an inclination towards wanting to do little things in their life that make them feel better despite no factual evidence - that leads people to religion, and also leads towards woo, and I think mild woo is less damaging.
In my mind, receiving essentially a daily writing prompt to think about my behavior (a horoscope) is less societally damaging than aligning myself with a religious body that pushes regressive legislation and covers up sexual abuse, and it scratches that itch for ritual and superstition. I’d honestly rather the majority of people believe in star sign nonsense than in Jesus, because aside from your typical capitalist commodification, astrology is pretty harmless in comparison. But it has to be mild woo! As soon as you’re using a star chart to determine whether to give your kid chemotherapy, you’re in the danger zone.
Basically, imo, most woo is mild. Most religion is mild, too, but it fortifies a very powerful cultural and political arm, and that makes it worse. To me your piece begs the question that it’s “unhealthy” to entertain the idea that your date of birth influences your mood (especially when there’s evidence that the season of your birth influences your early childhood educational attainment - maybe there’s some underlying truth to December babies being hooligans on the playground). Maybe silly horoscope rituals are a healthier outlet for some common human impulses than the alternatives.
It's so interesting to me that the skeptics of religion always target Christianity and Catholicism specifically. Your comments about regressive legislation and sexual abuse makes this point and Freddie's tradcath comment. I'm not picking on you. I see this theme across the board by the atheists, agnostics or anti-religion folks. It's become the only acceptable bigotry. Muslims and Jews (non-reform at least) oppose gay marriage and many are opposed to abortion. I won't opine on the theological arguments for these positions because I'm not knowledgeable enough but the idea that religion is regressive is tiresome and also not always borne out by history. History and change are not linear.
"It's so interesting to me that the skeptics of religion always target Christianity and Catholicism specifically."
This is because Christianity and Catholicism are still seen as having a measure of political and cultural power. Sociologists of religion have long defined a "cult" as "a religion without political power." Back when the Jim Jones' Peoples' Temple was a force in San Francisco area politics, local reporters referred to the Reverend Jones as a "religious leader" and not a "cult leader", and the People's Temple was a "religion" and nothing but. This changed abruptly, when the Temple backed the wrong horse in a mayoral race.
Similarly, I suspect that the working definition of "woo" is "religious belief without organization, and consequently, without political power".
On Saturday I attended my uncle's memorial service. It was the first time I've been in a church building in 5 or so years. I felt comforted by the gentle support of the believers, and I felt their sincerity deeply. The old songs and scriptures (selected for the sombre moment) were beautiful. But their belief felt alien, incomprehensible as literally true, even though I used to think the same as them.
During the service, a huge storm rolled in. Loud thunderclaps shook the chapel. While the preacher shared a word of encouragement, a water leak suddenly burst through the ceiling in the hall. Later, when the Spanish-speaking church minister was talking of hope, everyone's phones started loudly beeping with a flash flood warning.
The religious could take all of those facts and discern the presence of God. The woo could take all those facts and discern the movement of spiritual energy. To me, they were just things that happened. Proof that life on the surface of this planet teems on, that the tadpoles in our backyard wouldn't dry up, and that my ephemeral grief is real, if not invested with any universal meaning.
"I felt comforted by the gentle support of the believers, and I felt their sincerity deeply. The old songs and scriptures (selected for the sombre moment) were beautiful. But their belief felt alien, incomprehensible as literally true"
Nicely said. This is exactly my experience of religious ceremonies: I feel the increase in community and comfort that the shared ritual brings, but considering the underlying beliefs as empirically true is indeed incomprehensible.
I have an otherwise intelligent friend who was using Astrology to pick stocks in the 90's. It was 'working' for a while, so he bought on-margin. When the reckoning came, he had to sell basically everything he owned to cover. I sold a guitar back to him later.
Not that I think Astrology is real, but I think the lesson here is don't do stock picking on margin. He probably would have had the same fate if he based his stock-picking on CNBC.
https://giphy.com/gifs/loop-ooo-snapp-11hVniWaqh17Q4/tile
I just looked up what buying stocks "On Margin" means and I am very mad now.
There is a reason that the smarter sort of psychics, mediums, astrologers and the like clam up when asked for investment advice.
Buying and Selling at random is probably a better strategy than what a lot of people do.
My Grandfather is eternally parked in front of the PC picking stocks and is always a little cagey about how *exactly* his investments are doing.
My father used to claim he would win his office football pool using a random number generator. I never understood how that would be ~better~ than an alternative, but I certainly believed odds makers were good enough that it was going to be as good as an alternative.
The more efficient markets get, the less likely it is that an individual investor can beat average return. Nassim Taleb et al have shown that there are always a select few in the tails of the distribution who beat the market for a few years. Then they regress to mean performance. They're not actually special - the Big Secret is "buy-and-hold while the line is going up".
I do take issue with the drones chanting "TINA" and "you can't time the market". When there are clear technical indicators the bear is in the campground, it's ok to pull out of equities for a year or so. Seems like there's a great American tradition of watching your 401k decline like there are no other options.
Unfortunately, I don't think we are going to get a reinvigorated skeptical movement any time soon. Instead, I think that we are going to see a splintering of it over transgender issues, as there seems to be a growing divide in the movement over which side is really following the science.
Maybe the Kennedy v. Bremerton School Dist. and/or Dobbs will refocus things.
It's absolutely clear which side is following the science (even though the other side has many vocal scientifically credentialed people in its camp).
I deleted a somewhat flippant comment.
Realistically, I tend to think that both sides of this debate have a tendency to get out over a limb on this. I've been following (and was specifically thinking of) the ongoing debate between Jesse Singal and Science Based Medicine. I've been a long time listener of Skeptics Guide but am relatively sympathetic to Singal as well (I'm a paid subscriber to BARPod). I think that both sides see themselves as acting like skeptics in this debate, with the SBM side seeing Singal's arguments as "skeptical" in the vein of climate skeptics, where the hole poking is intended more to obfuscate than clarify.
My personal view on this is that at lot of this is a lot less about science than either side thinks, with both sides talking past one another (sometimes intentionally, sometimes less so).
I do think that pro-trans rights side is probably a bit overly credulous when it comes to stuff like youth transition, even if it does appear that, in most instances, youth transition is the best option and it is at least plausible that being overaggressive on this is causing less harm in total than being overly conservative. I also understand the concerns about loose criticism providing fodder for people who are truly transphobic, rather than just concerned that we aren't making a mistake in our treatment approach. However, I think there is some effort to put a thumb on research in this area to avoid anything that could be used by the anti-trans side that is risking missing important research that would actually help (or avoid harm to) trans people.
"it is at least plausible that being overaggressive on this is causing less harm in total than being overly conservative."
I would recommend You wait for the CASS report coming outta the UK before You go out on that limb. But if You go by Sweden outlawing gender-affirming care, and France (and can't recall, Finland?) pulling back, then I'd say the odds go the other way.
The so-called science that not affirming care leads to suicide. LOW quality study. According to actual scientists.
"it is at least plausible..."
It seems like the vast majority of people who transition as teens remain transitioned and are glad that they transitioned. (I've seen this as an actual study somewhere, but I don't have it handy). There are obviously confounding factors, including changes the cohort of people who are now transitioning. But I think that is enough to say that it is at least plausible.
Note that evidence that transitioning/transitioning early causes medical issues wouldn't really change this. The ultimate question is whether the people's lives are subjectively better, and medical issues are just one factor that go into this.
When You're talking about lack of bone density, possible destroying capability of orgasm and causing sterility, I don't think it's so easy to just brush off. But, fact is, there just now starting to investigate scientifically. That should-a been done prior.
AFAIK, most-a it is just a scam from the Techno-Medical Complex. Money still talks loudest.
If I offer to treat people's headaches by lopping off both legs, and a decade from now, 9/10 people who got the treatment are happy they got it, I think it is at least plausible that it is doing more harm than good.
My comment was in no way intended to be flippant. It is, IMO, a deadly serious and important issue. And I strongly disagree with your "both sides"ism.
I deleted a somewhat flippant comment by me in response to your comment and replaced it with a more sincere one, to which you responded.
"This is frequently chalked up to living in an increasingly stressful era; I have never seen satisfying proof that there’s anything more stressful about now as compared to, say, George W. Bush’s United States, but thus the story goes."
That wouldn't be unprecedented. WWI and the 1918 pandemic are often credited with a big uptick in spiritualism.
As for comparisons to W's America, you had a quip a while ago that I liked so much I wrote it down: "In recent decades it's felt like everything has been undermined and nothing has been built. We churn out college graduates who can critique everything but create nothing." For whatever combination of reasons--polarization; disinformation and social-media echo chambers; America's weakening economy and obviously declining influence in the world; formerly revered historical figures being (rightly or wrongly) rejected as racist monsters, etc--the feeling that everything is falling apart and circling the drain is, to me at least, much stronger than it was during W's tenure. Back then, if you thought we should go to war with Iraq, you had a cause to believe in, and if you didn't, well, you had a cause to fight for as well. Now we all seem to hate each other (online, at least), and institutions like legacy media, the public health establishment, and the police have all lost the more-or-less default trust that most people once placed in them.
When everything in the visible world seems to be slipping through your fingers like sand, a lot of people will turn to the invisible world, which conveniently can be anything you want it to be. It's probably related to the decline of traditional religion as well--people generally need to believe in something, and if they stop going to church they will still fill the hole with tarot or Q-anon or politics.
Trump was way more disruptive than Bush. Quick example on police reform: John Ashcroft’s DOJ helped to create a consent decree with the city of Cincinnati in 2001 after years of police brutality there, and he was generally supportive of police reform (though he shredded desegregation). Basically, continuity with Janet Reno, which means, things have to get really really bad, but the DOJ will support local police reform efforts. Jeff Sessions shredded all Eric Holder’s consent decrees with fucked up police departments, and worked to dramatically curtail the ability of the DOJ to investigate police departments. The world of 2016-2020 was pretty fucked up, and we’re still living under the specter of it returning in an even more brutal form. This doesn’t excuse the fecklessness of Biden or Clinton or Obama or Bush.
Everything Trump did as president put together pales in comparison to just one massive mistake Bush made: the war in Iraq.
I've never thought about that before, and honestly, that's really true.
Matt Taibbi has written pretty extensively on that particular topic:
"A few years ago, George W. Bush was on track to be remembered as one of the worst presidents of all time, if not the worst. He was both more disdainful and more ignorant of the law than Nixon, his arsonist economic stewardship was rivaled only by Hoover, and intellectwise he made Chester A. Arthur look like Copernicus. He was also a worse and more destructive president than Donald Trump, and it wasn’t close. Trump talked big, but it was Bush who actually smashed norms on a grand scale, from international law to human rights to adherence to the most basic constitutional principles, in pursuit of policies that Brown University just estimated cost $8 trillion and led to 900,000 deaths."
This piece is not paywalled and it's really good:
https://taibbi.substack.com/p/a-tale-of-two-authoritarians
Idk Taibbi sounds kind of unhinged there? It’s why I don’t read him. I’m not a fan of Assange AND I’m not a fan of Cheney AND I’m not a fan of Trump, because all of them are openly contemptuous of democracy and the rule of law. I don’t think equating vaccine passports (which would seriously have made all of our lives easier/better) with Gitmo, or drone strikes, makes a ton of sense. I get the idea of being a HARD civil libertarian, but taking that stance and then somehow exempting Trump from it is very weird. Yes, Trump was too incompetent to be a real authoritarian. But he did a Muslim ban? And put kids in cages? I’m down with Taibbi’s consistent contempt for Russiagate and “misinformation,” but the rest of it is bad.
The stupidity of the idea that vaccine passports could have ever helped fight COVID is beyond words. Our existing vaccines do not stop or even hinder spread, they just reduce the likelihood of severe illness and death.
Taibbi regularly shits on Trump as well. He is not a fan. He just (correctly) also shits on the idea that Trump is the worst president ever to such an extent that we need to act like there's a national emergency every single day he's still alive. Bush was a lot worse, and there was and is nowhere near the level of revulsion for him in the hearts of America's sad journalistic community.
I think what’s more interesting is what Freddie identified - that irrationality is a deep and persistent tendency of humans. And that’s interesting - why would it benefit a human to be irrational? Wouldn’t more rational humans have out competed the ones who looked for the rising of Venus as being an auspicious time to hunt deer?
My guess is it’s three factors:
- The ascribing of motivation. That was probably a great evolutionary advance, the ability to assume that other humans had motivations, and being able to guess the future based on modeling those motivations. It was probably such a great advance that it goes a little too far, and we ascribe motivations to the rock you stubbed your toe on, the sky for raining on you, and it’s a short step from there to rock and sky gods that you didn’t propitiate that morning.
- Being over-biased toward correlation. Maybe deer really *did* come out more when Venus was rising. A little extra light, time of the year… finding correlations, subtle ones, was probably very advantageous. But when you’re looking for correlations, you are naturally going to ‘find’ some that aren’t so - and thus, boys born under the light of Venus are foretold to be great hunters.
- The tuning of reality. Meaning, our sense of reality and reasoning is probably best when life is short and brutal, particularly if we get to observe it happening to others. Those with kids will sympathize with the observation that one incident of a burned finger on a stove is more effective than a hundred warnings not to play around the stove. By making our day-to-day lives so much safer and nicer, we’ve inadvertently set up an environment where believing in woo woo is mostly harmless. You don’t melt your fingertips off believing in a horoscope.
I don’t see us being able to alter the first two factors to get us more rational humans. And the third… I don’t want a miserable, cruel life to “educate” people. Civilization is all about making life less brutal and unfair. Perhaps more woo woo is part of the price of civilization?
Religion is a social phenomena. It's not about individual belief, it's something you do, and it's something which only makes sense within a group. Indeed, if you look at many cultures historically (like say ancient Rome) they were pretty explicit that they didn't really care what you believed (and too much belief was a bad thing) they wanted you to show up in temples and make offerings to the gods.
I also think you're over-estimating the level of individual irrationality that people have. Back in the 2000s the idea that religion was based upon hyperactive agency detection was common, but it's fallen from favor more recently. Part of this is studies of people from traditional societies have found that they really have no issue separating their mythology from day-to-day requirements when it comes to survival. Indeed, across all societies we see roughly the same peppering of natural skeptics and apathetic people we have in the modern west.
The new idea regarding the foundation of religion is that the foundation is in the natural trance states that the human mind can fall into - particularly when taking part in a group activity involving music and/or rituals. We found the doorway into altered states of consciousness, and built up a mythology (and eventually a theology) over millennia to help explain the feeling of transcendence.
If ancient Rome didn't care what you believed, then why make you show up in temples?
Roman religious practice was about providing the proper reverence for the gods. The gods didn't "care" if you hated them, they "cared" if you made public appearances in temples and did your civic duty. Indeed, the term religio meant a sense of moral obligation/duty, and was contrasted with superstisio, which was their term for doing or believing more regarding the gods than was necessary. Christianity was of course superstisio...one reason the Roman old guard hated Christianity was because Christians took religion way too seriously.
In some ways the Roman practice isn't that different from the historic Chinese religious practices, which place great emphasis on things like filial piety, which we don't really take as being religious today.
So works > faith, kind of.
It's interesting then that Christianity replaced paganism in Europe. This was done in large part through the sword, but I also think that religions that demand more of people fill a need.
Ah, that’s interesting regarding studies of more traditional societies, and the idea that religion is more of a socially approved trance state. I never, ever found religion compelling, despite being exposed to it repeatedly while growing up - joining something because everybody else was doing it felt… uncomfortable? Silly? Something to be ducked out of with the minimal public social gesture so you wouldn’t be noticed as standing out? And I’ve never gotten close to a trance state that I can tell. Perhaps I wasn’t built to believe.
I wonder about that distribution of skeptics & apathetic people you reference. Do you have a source or a book you’d recommend?
You weren't built to believe...built by WHOM?!?! eh??? Eh?!!?
I experienced it once in a dream when I was around 20. It was a really weird feeling. I was someone else in the dream other than myself, and the dream content was semi-mystical anyway. But then the walls between myself and other people came down, and my entire dream life (past and future) flashed before my eyes, along with the lives of those in my family. I felt a sense of oneness and as if everything was right in the world and in its proper place. Then I woke up into boring old reality.
I wouldn't call religion the "price" for civilization, more like a necessary component. Constitutions, laws, states, they're all fake made up stories we've created, in our heads, from nothing but our imaginations just like religion. If I were to come down from a mountain with some commandments I made up to get the tribe to behave it makes sense that I should also make up a story about how they came from some higher power. It protects me somewhat from being thrown into the volcano, and also gives the rules a chance to survive after I die. The question is can we as fallible humans ever follow rules conjured up by same fallible humans without some sort backstop higher power behind the curtain. Maybe, but it sure seems the successful rules seem to require it. And it also seems that as our rule making gets more sophisticated so does religion. They seem to go hand in hand that way.