On September 29 2013 04:45 Djzapz wrote: Farvacola, he did specify that ideology is the culprit a lot of the time. Stalin and Mao had ideologies which made them do atrocious things much in the same way religion could have.
I also agree with him when he says that religion is responsible for a bunch of bullshit on the small scale like the refusal of treatment. Ideology can be responsible for the same kind of human idiocy - like the refusal of vaccines because of some shit that Martha Stewart has said, and somehow pop culture supersedes medicine and science in part of the collective minds and certain people are now stupidly afraid of getting their kids vaccinated.
Ideologies and religions can act as catalysts for dumb decisions.
That said, none of it justifies being afraid of ALL religious people.
All of those problems with society have roots that go beyond religion though; "religion is responsible for bad things" is a flashy red herring that is quite fashionable to hone in on these days. Unfortunately, nothing is so simple, and the attitudes that underlie vaccine denial and the like, while certainly oftentimes present alongside some sort of religiosity, are not a religious phenomena.
I think it's disingenuous to dismiss the connection just by calling a red herring. Sure you can say the word's more complex than a one-liner explanation of why religion has been responsible for bad things but if you try to be a realist for a second you'll be willing to make that concession.
Religion has played a role in many events and just general occurrences that most people would qualify as bad. Sure, it's part of a bigger more general thing that anthropologists could have a field day with, but that doesn't mean that we can't try to point out how religion influences people and/or their actions, sometimes negatively.
I mean let's take a very direct type of influence on the micro scale. A little village has a church and a bunch of people go to it, they have something in common, a sentiment that they belong there. The church authority decides to suggest that people be charitable. It's entirely possible that the people of the town will take up on that moral guidance or whatever.
Now if the same church says you should hate the fags, or you shouldn't wear a rubber because it's bad, it's hard not to dismiss the causal link when religious people have more of a tendency to dislike homosexuals and less people used condoms in a bunch of African countries after the pope said not to use rubbers some years ago which led to an increase in the numbers of cases of AIDS.
These are just examples but still, religion and ideologies, like many other things, are factors which can influence people to be shitty when they otherwise wouldn't be. It can have a vile snowball effect. Slap to that the fact that religions are generally tied to old scripture with an outdated sense of morality, and you have an influence which can easily be bad.
It's a red herring because religion is no different than any other ideological apparatus in terms of how humans are liable to use and misuse its constituent message. National identification of the masses, "progress", the appearance of science among a host of other ideas are all at play when large groups of people make poor judgments, but none are responsible in and of themselves. There is a reason why people who write blogs like this are totally unaware of how much charity and do-gooding comes about as a result of religious influence; the world is a much scarier place when no one thing is essentially "bad" or "good".
Just because it's no different doesn't mean it's a red herring. For all intents and purposes you're trying to stall the discussion by trying to suggest that there's a bigger, wider discussion which could be had on the same topic.
This is more specific and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Not all conversations need to be taken from the most general standpoint. I mean you could make the same point you're making about just about any topic and the only thing you'd end up accepting as a discussion topic would be like "Social sciences: discuss".
And to make it worse you then go straight into criticizing some semantics stuff. So yeah you're stalling a perfectly genuine topic, even though I'd say that OP's wrong.
@farva We are usually polar opposites, but in this case I agree completely with your points. Another way of putting it is that religion isn't the cause of behavior such as vaccine denial, it is merely correlated with other factors which lead to such behavior, such as a lack of education.
On September 29 2013 04:45 Djzapz wrote: Farvacola, he did specify that ideology is the culprit a lot of the time. Stalin and Mao had ideologies which made them do atrocious things much in the same way religion could have.
I also agree with him when he says that religion is responsible for a bunch of bullshit on the small scale like the refusal of treatment. Ideology can be responsible for the same kind of human idiocy - like the refusal of vaccines because of some shit that Martha Stewart has said, and somehow pop culture supersedes medicine and science in part of the collective minds and certain people are now stupidly afraid of getting their kids vaccinated.
Ideologies and religions can act as catalysts for dumb decisions.
That said, none of it justifies being afraid of ALL religious people.
All of those problems with society have roots that go beyond religion though; "religion is responsible for bad things" is a flashy red herring that is quite fashionable to hone in on these days. Unfortunately, nothing is so simple, and the attitudes that underlie vaccine denial and the like, while certainly oftentimes present alongside some sort of religiosity, are not a religious phenomena.
I think it's disingenuous to dismiss the connection just by calling a red herring. Sure you can say the word's more complex than a one-liner explanation of why religion has been responsible for bad things but if you try to be a realist for a second you'll be willing to make that concession.
Religion has played a role in many events and just general occurrences that most people would qualify as bad. Sure, it's part of a bigger more general thing that anthropologists could have a field day with, but that doesn't mean that we can't try to point out how religion influences people and/or their actions, sometimes negatively.
I mean let's take a very direct type of influence on the micro scale. A little village has a church and a bunch of people go to it, they have something in common, a sentiment that they belong there. The church authority decides to suggest that people be charitable. It's entirely possible that the people of the town will take up on that moral guidance or whatever.
Now if the same church says you should hate the fags, or you shouldn't wear a rubber because it's bad, it's hard not to dismiss the causal link when religious people have more of a tendency to dislike homosexuals and less people used condoms in a bunch of African countries after the pope said not to use rubbers some years ago which led to an increase in the numbers of cases of AIDS.
These are just examples but still, religion and ideologies, like many other things, are factors which can influence people to be shitty when they otherwise wouldn't be. It can have a vile snowball effect. Slap to that the fact that religions are generally tied to old scripture with an outdated sense of morality, and you have an influence which can easily be bad.
It's a red herring because religion is no different than any other ideological apparatus in terms of how humans are liable to use and misuse its constituent message. National identification of the masses, "progress", the appearance of science among a host of other ideas are all at play when large groups of people make poor judgments, but none are responsible in and of themselves. There is a reason why people who write blogs like this are totally unaware of how much charity and do-gooding comes about as a result of religious influence; the world is a much scarier place when no one thing is essentially "bad" or "good".
Just because it's no different doesn't mean it's a red herring. For all intents and purposes you're trying to stall the discussion by trying to suggest that there's a bigger, wider discussion which could be had on the same topic.
This is more specific and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Not all conversations need to be taken from the most general standpoint. I mean you could make the same point you're making about just about any topic and the only thing you'd end up accepting as a discussion topic would be like "Social sciences: discuss".
And to make it worse you then go straight into criticizing some semantics stuff. So yeah you're stalling a perfectly genuine topic, even though I'd say that OP's wrong.
When those conversations diagnose a problem incorrectly, saying so is not some slight against the good spirit of Online Forum Discussion. The OP literally says that he is afraid of religious people, and the according discussion, barring a few exceptions, revolves around posters variously diagnosing many of society's deficits in reasonable, moral thinking as religious in nature. I am saying that that is a misdiagnosis that misses the forest for the trees; moving forward in hopefully reducing the amount of, for lack of better words, "bad" thinking is going to require that folks get past their obsession with finding a nice, concrete target with which to make their impassioned arguments.
Yes, religious thinking is a definite harm when it comes to something like Catholicism's opposition to contraception or the ultra-conservative African Protestant anti-gay shit, but what does saying so get us? Are we going to ignore the millions upon millions of dollars of charity that churches pour into Africa to remain consistent? (many of which are the most effective charities, I might add) Just go to any refugee camp in the world today and tell me who is doing the most work helping, treating, educating, feeding, and the picture suddenly becomes a lot grayer.
Perhaps it is not the "religion" that we ought to be focusing on so much as what might be running into religion and turning it into something despicable or intellectually dishonest. In the US, for example, religiosity has been highly politicized in the way it folds into a number of the tenets of both conservatism and progressivism, and there can be no doubt that for many citizens, their religion and their politics are quite entangled. Add in the incredibly inconsistent quality of education and one can see how various demographics might congeal out of a bad combination of blind spirituality, educational shortcoming, and confirmation bias. We won't help these people nor ourselves by getting hung up over the fact that they name God in all that they do; it would be much better to focus on education and how it is that selfishness and judgementalism became such fashionable standards. Keeping in mind the power of religion to motivate humans to great charity and cooperation, I think the church just might be the best place to win these people over.
On September 29 2013 05:55 TheOneWhoKnocks wrote: @farva We are usually polar opposites, but in this case I agree completely with your points. Another way of putting it is that religion isn't the cause of behavior such as vaccine denial, it is merely correlated with other factors which lead to such behavior, such as a lack of education.
I understand where you're coming from and there are underlying causes which can't be explained solely by looking at religions as the problem, but I think you're wrong if you don't see that religion itself carries a shitload of bad ideas. Certainly gullibility and whatnot doesn't stem from religion but it may be (I dunno) more present in religious people and we're not looking at that here, but religion IMO has direct influences too.
On September 27 2013 10:33 deathly rat wrote: Secondly, I fear that someone who has come to what I consider such a highly irrational conclusion as believing in a god (no matter how rational you may think it is), makes me wonder what other kind of highly irrational conclusions they may reach in the future.
Oh man it really gets under my skin when people say something like this. Simply because they themselves are incapable of justifying other people's views, they deem it illogical. When it basically comes down to the fact that the person him/herself is not intelligent or educated enough to see things from a different perspective. The world would be a much better place when people would stop doing this.
On September 29 2013 06:04 farvacola wrote: Perhaps it is not the "religion" that we ought to be focusing on so much as what might be running into religion and turning it into something despicable or intellectually dishonest.
We aren't focusing on religion, we're focusing on religious people. Religious people are scary because of the combination of irrationality and crazy beliefs. Whether lack of education leads to religion or religion leads to lack of education or there is a positive feedback loop there is completely irrelevant. That only some religious people have certain negative attributes doesn't mean anything because the amount of people with those attributes is disproportionally high in relegious groups, which is a good reason to generally be wary of religious people you don't know well. And crazy beliefs are much more common in religious people than in your average confused Sunday morning Christian, and religious people are more likely to act on them even when e.g. social norms tell them otherwise. That's what makes them scary, and the question what the underlying causes ultimately are doesn't matter at all.
I don't even hate him, nor do I feel like I'm particularly opposed to what he says in most of his posts, but I think he's going at this from the wrong angle.
On September 29 2013 07:21 koreasilver wrote: posts like Djzapz in religion threads wouldn't exist if everyone read Nietzsche even just once.
I've read plenty of Nietzsche but apparently not the part that invalidates my posting, please feel free to enlighten me if you've got more than cheap one liners in you... I don't see why it's completely wrong to look at these things from a bottom up perspective and no passive aggressive bullshit will change that. Drop some knowledge at me and don't just try to insult my intelligence without adding anything to the thread.
At this point I'm pretty much persuaded that my critics either fiddle with semantics, try to be politically correct or simply don't understand what I've been saying, possibly because I'm not expressing myself correctly.
As far as I can tell, Favra's posting calls the topic a red herring solely because he thinks religion is a subset of ideologies. I agree that it's a subset, but this fact doesn't make it a red herring, it's just limited in scope which is not inherently wrong. Being dismissive of a topic because it's too focused by calling it a red herring is to completely misunderstand what a red herring is.
I don't know how you've lasted so long on this forum with that bullshit Koreasilver, it's so irritating. I hope that you're at least going to grow a spine and try to enlighten me. Fucking name-dropping. Seriously is this 4chan.
Nietzsche points out that everything fundamentally has its own logic, so in the grounds of it you don't accept or dismiss certain ideologies off of whether it is "rational" or not since there isn't a one totalizing rationality that points to the "real". Your posts in these religion threads is such a pain because the fact that each and every discourse has its own internal logic is just completely lost on you, so you carry on this classic liberal attitude that everything can be homogenized under one language. But it isn't really so - thus Adorno argued that art has its own logic that is apart from political overseers; thus Schmitt shows us that politics has its own central axioms that are utterly different from moral and economic categories; thus Heidegger shows us that theology is a science insofar as it goes about its object of study through a scientific methodology. The main problem is that you, due to your incompetence in the substance of these religion threads, like hundreds and thousands of other posters besides you on this forum, are just unable to understand the epistemological independence each of these fields have - most importantly, you are blind to the fact that rationality is a method within a structure. You just can't read Nietzsche and then go on to constantly imply that there is Truth and Reason in a classical liberal way that is pretty much just a secularized reflection of Christian moralism. It's just way beyond being cringeworthy.
But I guess some people just need a boogeyman to make the world sensible to them, be it communism, religion, science, capitalism, etc. etc.
You're strangely pretentious for someone who continuously drops names and concepts and summarizes shit without explaining your own thoughts.
First, you misunderstand my posting if you somehow manage to see a totalitarian opinion in my posting. I believe that everything I've said is perfectly reasonable despite your list of thinkers and concepts, and the only thing I've done is I haven't agreed with farva when he tried to dismiss an entire topic of discussion with a shoddy argument.
And frankly, I don't even know which part of what I said you're even arguing with because your first post was a one liner and this new post is a list of shit you learned when you got your philosophy major at some university. It's clear that you haven't mastered any of it because you've failed to synthesize it in a coherent fashion, but worse than that, you haven't made any effort (or simply don't have the competence) to link the thoughts of the various authors to the actual points you were trying to make. If you cannot explain yourself in plain English, perhaps you don't know what you're talking about.
Your post reads "grocery list" of thoughts written down by a new university student who reads a lot but doesn't know how to write and it's really annoying because now you can try to turn this around and say that I have reading comprehension issues. I'll attempt to take your stuff point by point. Please try to enlighten me with your superior intellect, once again, in a comprehensible fashion, by tying what you write to actual issues that you have with what I've been saying. STOP DROPPING NAMES AND CONCEPTS WITH NO EXPLANATIONS. And although you've been insisting that I'm an idiot, I really am not, and I'm doing my best effort to read and understand what you're trying to clumsily express but you're going to have to do better.
ONE
Nietzsche points out that everything fundamentally has its own logic, so in the grounds of it you don't accept or dismiss certain ideologies off of whether it is "rational" or not since there isn't a one totalizing rationality that points to the "real".
Rationality doesn't necessarily lead to truths, I agree. Not contrary to anything I've said. It seems to me like this is the point you were trying to make and everything else is filler/fluff.
That said, you need to understand that punctuation changes the meaning of a sentence. You're very difficult to read, especially when you say shit like "so in the grounds of it". What is that? Is that some kid of mid-sentence "Basically"?
TWO
Your posts in these religion threads is such a pain because the fact that each and every discourse has its own internal logic is just completely lost on you, so you carry on this classic liberal attitude that everything can be homogenized under one language. But it isn't really so - thus Adorno argued that art has its own logic that is apart from political overseers
Help me unscramble that fucking mess a- My posts are a pain because b- Every discourse has its own internal logic is completely lost on me (incoherent) c- thus, Adorno that art has its own logic (does not follow, is that an example?) [This part of your text gets a 0, incoherent argument]
The "thus" is especially confusing because you're essentially saying: The logic is lost on me and AS A RESULT OF THIS Adorno (says something). Now, I'm pretty fucking sure Adorno doesn't know who I am, and his argument about art having its own logic has nothing to do with my supposed inability to understand the internal logic of a given discourse...
THREE
thus Schmitt shows us that politics has its own central axioms that are utterly different from moral and economic categories
You still haven't made any tangible links with what I've said. What is this about?
Heidegger shows us that theology is a science insofar as it goes about its object of study through a scientific methodology
Sure, it's a social science basically. That's what I do in life. Explain the relevance of this because at least I don't follow.
FOUR
you [...] are just unable to understand the epistemological independence each of these fields have - most importantly, you are blind to the fact that rationality is a method within a structure. You just can't read Nietzsche and then go on to constantly imply that there is Truth and Reason in a classical liberal way that is pretty much just a secularized reflection of Christian moralism. It's just way beyond being cringeworthy.
Which part of what I've said specifically shows a misunderstanding of the epistemological independance of the fields of economy, morality and politics?
My diagnosis here is that you're a pseudo-intellectual who's very good at making lists but you can't be bothered to write on your own. Also, you have a very rigid understanding of certain concepts, which keeps you boxed in and exceedingly narrow minded.
So once again, I don't even know what you're even arguing against.
But I guess some people just need a boogeyman to make the world sensible to them, be it communism, religion, science, capitalism, etc. etc.
I think that if you read my posts you'll be hard pressed to find any harsh criticism of religion. I said things which were true, but I was criticized for having not necessarily looked into every underlying cause of why these things were true. This is very much like pretty much every paper ever written, though... we're not all writing massive encyclopedias every time we want to explore a certain phenomenon or a topic. We just talk about it, being fully aware that an exhaustive study of every component of any given issue cannot be completely understood. I maintain that most topics in social sciences are discussed like this and the only reason why people are opposed to it in this case is because of their personal beliefs. They want to shut this down.
I would like for you to post again but try to make an effort this time around. I think your second post was very reminiscent of the first in that its purpose was essentially "I think these people say you're wrong and therefore you're wrong".
When you write an argument, make some effort to directly refer to the thing you're arguing with. Your argument doesn't live in a vacuum, regardless of how angry you are. Now if a better man than I cares to explain what koreasilver was going for, please feel free to hit me up. French is my first language so maybe that's part of why I'm having trouble with his post. I'm legitimately trying to figure this out.
On September 29 2013 09:48 koreasilver wrote: Nietzsche points out...
See, this is what I was hoping to avoid; all this "how presumptuous of you to use logic and reasoning when discussing beliefs that endanger people's lives" bullshit, followed up by the traditional "there can be no objective truth so don't you ever criticise anything again" stance.
Apart from that nothing in your post has anything to do with the topic of religious people, it would also be nice if you could tone down a bit on the ad hominem.
On September 29 2013 09:48 koreasilver wrote: Truth and Reason in a classical liberal way that is pretty much just a secularized reflection of Christian moralism
You seem pretty confused about the whole truth concept, so maybe this will help you: The Useful Idea of Truth
On September 29 2013 10:39 Djzapz wrote: You're strangely pretentious for someone who continuously drops names and concepts and summarizes shit without explaining your own thoughts.
First, you misunderstand my posting if you somehow manage to see a totalitarian opinion in my posting. I believe that everything I've said is perfectly reasonable despite your list of thinkers and concepts, and the only thing I've done is I haven't agreed with farva when he tried to dismiss an entire topic of discussion with a shoddy argument.
And frankly, I don't even know which part of what I said you're even arguing with because your first post was a one liner and this new post is a list of shit you learned when you got your philosophy major at some university. It's clear that you haven't mastered any of it because you've failed to synthesize it in a coherent fashion, but worse than that, you haven't made any effort (or simply don't have the competence) to link the thoughts of the various authors to the actual points you were trying to make. If you cannot explain yourself in plain English, perhaps you don't know what you're talking about.
Your post reads "grocery list" of thoughts written down by a new university student who reads a lot but doesn't know how to write and it's really annoying because now you can try to turn this around and say that I have reading comprehension issues. I'll attempt to take your stuff point by point. Please try to enlighten me with your superior intellect, once again, in a comprehensible fashion, by tying what you write to actual issues that you have with what I've been saying. STOP DROPPING NAMES AND CONCEPTS WITH NO EXPLANATIONS. And although you've been insisting that I'm an idiot, I really am not, and I'm doing my best effort to read and understand what you're trying to clumsily express but you're going to have to do better.
Nietzsche points out that everything fundamentally has its own logic, so in the grounds of it you don't accept or dismiss certain ideologies off of whether it is "rational" or not since there isn't a one totalizing rationality that points to the "real".
Rationality doesn't necessarily lead to truths, I agree. Not contrary to anything I've said. It seems to me like this is the point you were trying to make and everything else is filler/fluff.
That said, you need to understand that punctuation changes the meaning of a sentence. You're very difficult to read, especially when you say shit like "so in the grounds of it". What is that? Is that some kid of mid-sentence "Basically"?
Your posts in these religion threads is such a pain because the fact that each and every discourse has its own internal logic is just completely lost on you, so you carry on this classic liberal attitude that everything can be homogenized under one language. But it isn't really so - thus Adorno argued that art has its own logic that is apart from political overseers
Help me unscramble that fucking mess a- My posts are a pain because b- Every discourse has its own internal logic is completely lost on me (incoherent) c- thus, Adorno that art has its own logic (does not follow, is that an example?) [This part of your text gets a 0, incoherent argument]
The "thus" is especially confusing because you're essentially saying: The logic is lost on me and AS A RESULT OF THIS Adorno (says something). Now, I'm pretty fucking sure Adorno doesn't know who I am, and his argument about art having its own logic has nothing to do with my supposed inability to understand the internal logic of a given discourse...
you [...] are just unable to understand the epistemological independence each of these fields have - most importantly, you are blind to the fact that rationality is a method within a structure. You just can't read Nietzsche and then go on to constantly imply that there is Truth and Reason in a classical liberal way that is pretty much just a secularized reflection of Christian moralism. It's just way beyond being cringeworthy.
Which part of what I've said specifically shows a misunderstanding of the epistemological independance of the fields of economy, morality and politics?
My diagnosis here is that you're a pseudo-intellectual who's very good at making lists but you can't be bothered to write on your own. Also, you have a very rigid understanding of certain concepts, which keeps you boxed in and exceedingly narrow minded.
So once again, I don't even know what you're even arguing against.
But I guess some people just need a boogeyman to make the world sensible to them, be it communism, religion, science, capitalism, etc. etc.
I think that if you read my posts you'll be hard pressed to find any harsh criticism of religion. I said things which were true, but I was criticized for having not necessarily looked into every underlying cause of why these things were true. This is very much like pretty much every paper ever written, though... we're not all writing massive encyclopedias every time we want to explore a certain phenomenon or a topic. We just talk about it, being fully aware that an exhaustive study of every component of any given issue cannot be completely understood. I maintain that most topics in social sciences are discussed like this and the only reason why people are opposed to it in this case is because of their personal beliefs. They want to shut this down.
I would like for you to post again but try to make an effort this time around. I think your second post was very reminiscent of the first in that its purpose was essentially "I think these people say you're wrong and therefore you're wrong".
When you write an argument, make some effort to directly refer to the thing you're arguing with. Your argument doesn't live in a vacuum, regardless of how angry you are. Now if a better man than I cares to explain what koreasilver was going for, please feel free to hit me up. French is my first language so maybe that's part of why I'm having trouble with his post. I'm legitimately trying to figure this out.
After reading this post I feel like I just watched the bar scene from good will hunting.
Boy the blog sure is euphoric. you might say op is enlightened by his own intelligence. Frankly I'm much more afraid of anyone who sees the world this black and white, because them vs us where one side is right and the other is mentally ill, has lead to some really scary shit.
That's kind of the point. When you're rational, you tend not to resort to those extreme measures that are endorsed by many religious scriptures, regardless of what you personally think of someone else's opinion.
Somewhat related quote:
Some responses to Lotteries: A Waste of Hope chided me for daring to criticize others' decisions; if someone else chooses to buy lottery tickets, who am I to disagree? This is a special case of a more general question: What business is it of mine, if someone else chooses to believe what is pleasant rather than what is true? Can't we each choose for ourselves whether to care about the truth?
An obvious snappy comeback is: "Why do you care whether I care whether someone else cares about the truth?" It is somewhat inconsistent for your utility function to contain a negative term for anyone else's utility function having a term for someone else's utility function. But that is only a snappy comeback, not an answer.
So here then is my answer: I believe that it is right and proper for me, as a human being, to have an interest in the future, and what human civilization becomes in the future. One of those interests is the human pursuit of truth, which has strengthened slowly over the generations (for there was not always Science). I wish to strengthen that pursuit further, in this generation. That is a wish of mine, for the Future. For we are all of us players upon that vast gameboard, whether we accept the responsibility or not.
And that makes your rationality my business.
Is this a dangerous idea? Yes, and not just pleasantly edgy "dangerous". People have been burned to death because some priest decided that they didn't think the way they should. Deciding to burn people to death because they "don't think properly" - that's a revolting kind of reasoning, isn't it? You wouldn't want people to think that way, why, it's disgusting. People who think like that, well, we'll have to do something about them...
I agree! Here's my proposal: Let's argue against bad ideas but not set their bearers on fire.
The syllogism we desire to avoid runs: "I think Susie said a bad thing, therefore, Susie should be set on fire." Some try to avoid the syllogism by labeling it improper to think that Susie said a bad thing. No one should judge anyone, ever; anyone who judges is committing a terrible sin, and should be publicly pilloried for it.
As for myself, I deny the therefore. My syllogism runs, "I think Susie said something wrong, therefore, I will argue against what she said, but I will not set her on fire, or try to stop her from talking by violence or regulation..."
So to begin with, you refuse to actually define what you mean by "rationality". To be fair, sc2superfan's post is beyond reasonableness in the sense that it has no scientific content in methodological rigour.
On September 28 2013 01:26 blubbdavid wrote: What's the notion of rationality?
I don't care to define it but people who use the words "One True God" unironically aren't into rationality, at least in that area of their life. I mean there's "true" in the damn phrase just to make sure it sounds dogmatic as fuck, you don't need to be a genius to see the person is rocking some serious confirmation bias.
On September 28 2013 01:49 blubbdavid wrote: So, while we don't have an exact definition, we now know at least partly what rationality is/contains in the area of spiritual beliefs: Not using the words "One True God" is rational. Great, we are already one step closer to solving the puzzle.
I figured that telling you to look for a definition would be boring for you and instead I decided to give a pretty good example why he'd obviously be incompatible with "rationality" in that regard. I think even he would admit that he didn't come off as particularly rational when he used that label.
Frankly, I would argue that you're insulting your own intelligence with your cheap rhetorical questions. I mean, many religious people themselves admit that their religion is outside of the real of rationality anyway. It's faith-based, they know it and they express it. The admission that their faith is not rational shows that at least they're intellectually honest.
But regardless of how much of bore sc2superfan's post is (like most of his posts), and no matter how obvious it may seem that there are real conceptual problems with problems are, if you can't define what you mean by rationality (no, simply saying that it would be a bore is not an adequate answer) then there's a conceptual disconnect. If you can't describe your methodology then there's no scientific content to it and it's not very useful except for asserting truisms. This is the source of irony in your posts in this thread. Now given our collective TL.net history with sc2superfan's posts, I don't think it would be much of a stretch to imagine that he thinks and will continue to think so for god knows how long that his posts are perfectly rational. And it can be "rational" insofar as it may be internally consistent under its foundational axioms.
Whether or not there are any reasons to take the axioms as a given is beyond the question (but for the sake of disclosure I will say that I personally do not think so) as "rationality" is not so much about Truth in the sense of being judged for its object of inquiry or end-product as it is about the application of consistency - it is about method. I don't know blubbdavid so I can't say what his purpose was in asking that question, but it isn't just a "cheap rhetorical question" (this deflection is just a dodge) - it's forcing you to define your terms and your methodology which you have refused to show. The recurring theme is that you continue to imply a set standard for the meaning of what reason is, how it operates, and by what standard - and by this logic you are able to say a sentence such as "The admission that their faith is not rational shows that at least they're intellectually honest". The implication is that for you "rationality" is univocal. The purpose of my Adorno, Schmitt, and Heidegger examples was to question that. Especially in the case of Schmitt, realpolitik would be nothing but absolute nonsense if you were unable to understand that the political operates under its own axioms so that even if political action was "irrational" by moral, aesthetic, and/or economic standards, it could still nevertheless be absolutely rational within its own processes. So I would ask, "What rationality? Rationality by what measure? Rationality for what purpose?". You don't offer any real explanation and simply saying that it is "obvious" and the such just doesn't cut it. It doesn't matter if we might agree completely on this point if there is no methodological rigour. Any idiot could believe in the "right things". Method is everything. Relying on truisms is nothing.
On September 29 2013 04:45 Djzapz wrote: Farvacola, he did specify that ideology is the culprit a lot of the time. Stalin and Mao had ideologies which made them do atrocious things much in the same way religion could have.
I also agree with him when he says that religion is responsible for a bunch of bullshit on the small scale like the refusal of treatment. Ideology can be responsible for the same kind of human idiocy - like the refusal of vaccines because of some shit that Martha Stewart has said, and somehow pop culture supersedes medicine and science in part of the collective minds and certain people are now stupidly afraid of getting their kids vaccinated.
Ideologies and religions can act as catalysts for dumb decisions.
That said, none of it justifies being afraid of ALL religious people, but I think it's fair to question their judgment in some cases.
So here's a point where you just don't understand the point farvacola is trying to make. The first main problem, which is very common in the West, is this understanding of religion as something that is of its own category that can be viewed apart from the rest of society. This is something that you do constantly by abstracting "religion" as having its own kind of pure agency and autonomy in reality. This is a Protestant ideological import where there is a secular/religious divide in society and the individual thus "religion" can be viewed as something private, personal, and a privation of the secular and the "rational". This becomes all the more apparent when anthropological studies show that the concept of what "religion" is very, very different in cultures that are otherwise to the Western, Christian, Eurocentric world, but I digress. You cleanly separate "ideologies" from "religions" without much explanation. What makes "religion" so structurally different from "ideologies" that it isn't one? God knows.
On September 29 2013 04:45 Djzapz wrote: Farvacola, he did specify that ideology is the culprit a lot of the time. Stalin and Mao had ideologies which made them do atrocious things much in the same way religion could have.
I also agree with him when he says that religion is responsible for a bunch of bullshit on the small scale like the refusal of treatment. Ideology can be responsible for the same kind of human idiocy - like the refusal of vaccines because of some shit that Martha Stewart has said, and somehow pop culture supersedes medicine and science in part of the collective minds and certain people are now stupidly afraid of getting their kids vaccinated.
Ideologies and religions can act as catalysts for dumb decisions.
That said, none of it justifies being afraid of ALL religious people.
All of those problems with society have roots that go beyond religion though; "religion is responsible for bad things" is a flashy red herring that is quite fashionable to hone in on these days. Unfortunately, nothing is so simple, and the attitudes that underlie vaccine denial and the like, while certainly oftentimes present alongside some sort of religiosity, are not a religious phenomena.
I think it's disingenuous to dismiss the connection just by calling a red herring. Sure you can say the world's more complex than a one-liner explanation of why religion has been responsible for bad things but if you try to be a realist for a second you'll be willing to make that concession.
Religion has played a role in many events and just general occurrences that most people would qualify as bad. Sure, it's part of a bigger more general thing that anthropologists could have a field day with, but that doesn't mean that we can't try to point out how religion influences people and/or their actions, sometimes negatively.
I mean let's take a very direct type of influence on the micro scale. A little village has a church and a bunch of people go to it, they have something in common, a sentiment that they belong there. The church authority decides to suggest that people be charitable. It's entirely possible that the people of the town will take up on that moral guidance or whatever.
Now if the same church says you should hate the fags, or you shouldn't wear a rubber because it's bad, it's hard not to dismiss the causal link when religious people have more of a tendency to dislike homosexuals and less people used condoms in a bunch of African countries after the pope said not to use rubbers some years ago which led to an increase in the numbers of cases of AIDS.
These are just examples but still, religion and ideologies, like many other things, are factors which can influence people to be shitty when they otherwise wouldn't be. It's kind of like that crowd psychology thing that said people in a crowd can tend to be dicks. It can have a vile snowball effect. Slap to that the fact that religions are generally tied to old scripture with an outdated sense of morality, and you have an influence which can easily be bad.
Nowhere in here do you actually deal with the the simple problem that farvacola offers to you. Given that, as you say yourself, that religious organizations are both capable of doing "good" and "bad", by what conceptual method do you show that religion in itself is inherently problematic? Nevermind the fact that you still haven't shown how "religion" is structurally different from "ideologies" as a whole, the only thing you've shown with this entire post is that religion can influence people in good and bad ways. There is no method here. You say this as if there is something that cannot be abused.
On September 29 2013 04:45 Djzapz wrote: Farvacola, he did specify that ideology is the culprit a lot of the time. Stalin and Mao had ideologies which made them do atrocious things much in the same way religion could have.
I also agree with him when he says that religion is responsible for a bunch of bullshit on the small scale like the refusal of treatment. Ideology can be responsible for the same kind of human idiocy - like the refusal of vaccines because of some shit that Martha Stewart has said, and somehow pop culture supersedes medicine and science in part of the collective minds and certain people are now stupidly afraid of getting their kids vaccinated.
Ideologies and religions can act as catalysts for dumb decisions.
That said, none of it justifies being afraid of ALL religious people.
All of those problems with society have roots that go beyond religion though; "religion is responsible for bad things" is a flashy red herring that is quite fashionable to hone in on these days. Unfortunately, nothing is so simple, and the attitudes that underlie vaccine denial and the like, while certainly oftentimes present alongside some sort of religiosity, are not a religious phenomena.
I think it's disingenuous to dismiss the connection just by calling a red herring. Sure you can say the word's more complex than a one-liner explanation of why religion has been responsible for bad things but if you try to be a realist for a second you'll be willing to make that concession.
Religion has played a role in many events and just general occurrences that most people would qualify as bad. Sure, it's part of a bigger more general thing that anthropologists could have a field day with, but that doesn't mean that we can't try to point out how religion influences people and/or their actions, sometimes negatively.
I mean let's take a very direct type of influence on the micro scale. A little village has a church and a bunch of people go to it, they have something in common, a sentiment that they belong there. The church authority decides to suggest that people be charitable. It's entirely possible that the people of the town will take up on that moral guidance or whatever.
Now if the same church says you should hate the fags, or you shouldn't wear a rubber because it's bad, it's hard not to dismiss the causal link when religious people have more of a tendency to dislike homosexuals and less people used condoms in a bunch of African countries after the pope said not to use rubbers some years ago which led to an increase in the numbers of cases of AIDS.
These are just examples but still, religion and ideologies, like many other things, are factors which can influence people to be shitty when they otherwise wouldn't be. It can have a vile snowball effect. Slap to that the fact that religions are generally tied to old scripture with an outdated sense of morality, and you have an influence which can easily be bad.
It's a red herring because religion is no different than any other ideological apparatus in terms of how humans are liable to use and misuse its constituent message. National identification of the masses, "progress", the appearance of science among a host of other ideas are all at play when large groups of people make poor judgments, but none are responsible in and of themselves. There is a reason why people who write blogs like this are totally unaware of how much charity and do-gooding comes about as a result of religious influence; the world is a much scarier place when no one thing is essentially "bad" or "good".
Just because it's no different doesn't mean it's a red herring. For all intents and purposes you're trying to stall the discussion by trying to suggest that there's a bigger, wider discussion which could be had on the same topic.
This is more specific and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Not all conversations need to be taken from the most general standpoint. I mean you could make the same point you're making about just about any topic and the only thing you'd end up accepting as a discussion topic would be like "Social sciences: discuss".
And to make it worse you then go straight into criticizing some semantics stuff. So yeah you're stalling a perfectly genuine topic, even though I'd say that OP's wrong.
I won't comment on whether or not your series of posts in here have been red herrings as that's a different discussion altogether, but the one that is stalling and stifling the discourse is you insofar as you don't actually have a self-conscious methodology. There is a greater discussion to be had, especially with understanding the role of realpolitik that cuts through the ideological veils (yes, you too have a particular ideological interpretation throughout your posts). So for someone that accuses others of stalling, semantics, etc., the one who has been deflecting questions throughout this thread is you. You've been doing it from the very beginning, no less. You've been relying pretty much entirely on implied truisms that beg the question. Nowhere have you shown exactly how "religion" is separate from "ideology" or even the rest of society, so the only way you could possibly say that carrying on the discourse to see the context of where religion is situated in is "stalling discussion" is if you can really prove that religion can be utterly abstracted. How this is "realism"? God knows. I can only imagine that rationality operates under the same mode of thought where a paragraph can be broken into sub-sentences to be examined. Surely one could pore over what the writer may be meaning not by reading the paragraph as a whole but by dissecting it into little broken fragments that are incomprehensible without context.
And as a footnote, lets all remember how pathetic it is to accuse another of being "pretentious" or a "pseudo-intellectual" - this isn't an argument; it's just a weak false-humility. If you can't read and if you aren't familiar with an area of study, then perhaps defer yourself? Imagine how comical it would be if the author of that "progressive faith" blog went up to an evolutionary biologist and just said "Nah, all this scientific jargon - it's just pretentious, I can't understand it. You're a pseudo-intellectual."
EPT
