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I got that, but doesn't that mean that you do think your ideology is crazy? Or rather, you know your ideology is crazy, but you don't think about it? I guess what I'm asking is how do you square this understanding with your belief in your ideology? The religious can at least gesture in the direction of history and say 'ok the supernatural stuff sounds crazy I guess but our results speak for themselves'.
My lizard brain decision tree for this sees ideology as religion minus the supernatural and so minus the crazy - it's not a perfect heuristic, but it used to serve me well (and is also probably part of why, like firmamenti, I too scream "how the fuck could this happen?" at the sky roughly once a quarter).
No it means i think that my ideology might LOOK crazy but if true is not.
Just like Catholicism looks crazy but if transubstantiation is true (and God is real et al) it is not actually crazy.
I am not talking about outcomes, Catholicism might give good outcomes for some believers while also being entirely insane. Those are orthogonal issues.
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What is the difference between supernatural and natural. Given some phenomenon X how do you classify it as natural or supernatural, under the assumption that you believe X to be truly occuring?
IMO when you talk about certain things being supernatural you are already at least halfway to the position of the non-believer. In many formulations gender is a metaphysical object.
The supernatural is that which humans are incapable of explaining with reason and science. What do you think is the difference between ideology and religion?
Fair enough but that would mean that anything that has a natural theology isn't a religion, for example Heaven's Gate, Scientology and Catholicism.
It's probably just a difference in intensity rather than in quality.
Do you think? Modelling ideology as religion without the supernatural, the difference imo is elements the believer takes on faith - those things believed despite evidence to the contrary. Scientology has thetans etc, heaven's gate had ascension etc, Catholics have transubstantiation etc. I see the supernatural as an important distinction between religion and ideology, because it is faith in something that appears absurd to others which defines the religious believer, and in my mind the only rational justification for an absurd belief is supernatural in origin. The supernatural is inexplicable to science, and therefore it looks crazy to the non believer, but the believer has been exposed to the religion's truth, which from a natural perspective induces a folie a deux that unites the followers, or from a supernatural perspective unites them around the revealed truth. Or at least that's how I see it.
I think the problem is giving a precise and self contained definition of 'supernatural™', that anyone acting in good faith can apply objectively and determine whether a belief is supernatural or not. I think this is what you are saying, that it doesn't matter if scientologists believe that thetans are natural, if they apply your definition in good faith they will find out that they are indeed supernatural™.
You don't really give this definition of supernatural™ but you make a few examples:
faith in something that appears absurd to others
an absurd belief
The supernatural is inexplicable to science
looks crazy to the non believer
Examples (1), (2) and (4) are obviously not objective, belief in HBD appears absurd to some and vice versa and etc. Number (3) is more compelling however I have a few questions: are all unproven physical theories religion? Was relativity a religion before it was proven? In other words is the supernatural time dependent (things that were supernatural beliefs today will not be supernatural tomorrow and vice versa in light of new evidence) or is it time invariant and a lot of scientific "knowledge" is just religion?
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