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Very noble sentiments. But it is equivalent to deeply discussing bigfoot or high fantasy novels as if they were true with a capital T. It seems like a waste of time and I feel as though a lot of good conversations have been hijacked recently by zealots air dropping faith based arguments all over the place. If one more solution to the world's ills or fractious politics is proposed as "have you heard the good news about our lord an savior JC" I'm going to scream.
Shoot, 100ProofTollBooth managed to shoehorn an entire sermon on the benefits of following Christ into an entirely unrelated thread about drug use in Portland Oregon.
This meme raises the question succinctly. The bald bipeds beasts that bestride the Earth in 2024 are really into lying, scheming, manipulating, and cheating.
They are clever, and have won great victories in the competition of Man against Nature. They are clever, and have created terrible weapons in the competition of Man against Man.
The rationalist project is that science and reason get used to build utopia. Are we actually headed towards global thermonuclear war, or towards a Lebanese style multicultural kakistocracy? The rationalist project has failed because it refused to engage with human greed, selfishness, and delusion.
The discussion moves on to the theory of second best. What is possible within the limits of human nature? If space aliens turn up and their space ship is an ant heap with monoclonal genetics, they will diagnose our problems easily enough. The scientist who values truth and refuses to sell out, is a nerd and doesn't get the girl. The scientist who monetizes "truth" and sells it to the richest corporation marries and has a mistress and propagates his anti-science-and-reason genes into the next generation. That is the diagnosis, but it offers no treatment.
One idea is bringing up children to believe in God. A God who commands scrupulous honesty and always is watching, even when all humans present are in on the scam and bought or compromised.
That probably gives the interstellar ants a good laugh. Humans have such a complicated relationship with self-awareness. What happens when the children brought up to believe in God work out that God is a pro-social myth? Some of them retain the honesty in worldly affairs that they were brought up with, and work to promote and preserve the pro-social myth. This involves an attitude adjustment from telling the truth because God commands it, to participating in the lie and the cover-up because society depends on the prosocial myth. But that is rare. Most fall into these two camps. Those who blurt out the truth in front of the children, as though the God they no longer believe in was watching, ready to punish them for telling the lie that He exists. Those who revert to instinct and seek reproductive success by lying, scheming, manipulating, and cheating, while also believing that they are choosing a variety of behaviours for themselves, not simply following their genetic programming.
Do you have an alternative idea? The rationalist project implicitly assumes that man was created by God with a divinely granted capacity for good. The rationalist project implicitly denies that man is an evolved creature, whose self-defeating duplicity is enforced and created by human genetics. The rationalist project, in as much as it ignores the true horror of being an evolved creature, is just another high fantasy. What is there left to discuss?
There was plenty of lying, scheming, manipulating, and cheating in times and places when theistic faith was most ascendant. Do you think Renaissance Italy, the Holy Roman Empire, the Abbasid Caliphate, and the Ottoman Empire had none of that? Members of the Sicilian Mafia all consider themselves scrupulous Catholics. You may say they are not, in fact, good Catholics (and I would agree, and AFAIK so does the chief of the Catholic Church), but convincing them that God is watching them would not stop their crimes, because they already believe that. People usually think their behavior is either righteous or at least justified by the circumstances; the thought does not become "I better not not burn down that store, God would punish me"; it becomes "Let's burn down that store, it's what anybody would do in my place, actually it's a pretty good idea, God will be happy I'm not a pushover".
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This is just not true, they have engaged a lot with human "greed" and "selfishness" (coordination failures), and "delusion" (bias, politics mind killer). Maybe they're wrong, but they're definitely engaging with it.
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Opening with a forwards from grandma style meme that wouldn't look out of place in a kevin sorbo movie is not a good start to this ramble to nowhere.
"The rationalist project implicitly assumes that man was created by God with a divinely granted capacity for good. The rationalist project implicitly denies that man is an evolved creature, whose self-defeating duplicity is enforced and created by human genetics" * Citation Badly Needed*
I'm sorry you have such a low opinion of the human race. Hopefully you'll live long enough to see that we're still on the upswing. Although for many believers--- the apocalypse is always delayed, never canceled.
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What on earth are you talking about? Have you even browsed the Sequences?
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You can minimize threads and move on if you don’t want to talk about religion, like I do with the endless circlejerking about artificial-not-very-intelligence.
I think if an idea or ideology is put forward on a public forum, and it has no basis in reality, it should be challenged rather than ignored or accepted. This is how good theories and ideas push out the incorrect ones, since clear demonstrable practical application responsible for all of the scientific miracles of the 500 years isn't enough.
The reason people circlejerk about AI is that it is going to be the defining feature of our lives going forward. It actually exists and is getting more powerful by the day.
I share your assessment of religion, but as others have already alluded to, I come here to see views I won’t hear anywhere else. If that means reading some % of what I think is obviously on its face nonsense then so be it.
You’ve said many times that pushback is not allowed—do you have some examples in mind?
If the criterion is “don’t post in a rat-adjacent forum views you aren’t prepared to change” then I think religion is far from the sole offender.
I've personally been advised by mods and others that pointing out that religion has no proof and makes no sense is "boring and played out", and "this isn't the place for militant atheist rhetoric ", "we don't want to relitigate the new atheist wars of 20 years ago here" when I merely point out the absolute absurdity of it all.
Meanwhile people proudly declare they are Christian Orthodox and write entire screeds of facile navel gazing nonsense, presented with nothing interesting or actionable, zero proof except their own personal feelings. Great works detailing their personal journey of early indoctrination, loss of faith, and reawakening even stronger over and over again on this forum.
What do you want to happen? It seems obvious to me it can’t be easily singled out as “the bad thing you aren’t allowed to post about” so posts like that will crop up.
You want to just freely reply that religion is nonsense over and over? To me that’s as tedious as someone posting “but that’s sexist” or something every time someone on the forum is sexist. It might be true but it doesn’t really add anything to the discussion. My suspicion would be that’s what mods mean when they say “it’s tired and played out.”
If people were writing nothing more than “Jesus is Lord” then sure but what I see is people writing fairly lengthy and thought out posts. I may disagree strongly but that’s why I’m here. And I would hope someone responding has more to say than “but there’s no evidence tho.”
Curiosity goes a long way. You mention it makes no sense on a rationalist adjacent forum, but I wonder what some of these people would say if you genuinely asked if (a) they generally consider themselves rationalists and (b) if so how do they think about that in the context of religion.
If, as I think, the point of this place is to have discussions you can’t have anywhere else, that line of conversation seems more in keeping with this place than rehashing the Great War.
I mean, what can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. There is no need to write lengthy rebuttals to what is really just fantasy fan fiction claiming to be true.
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If "discussing bigfoot or high fantasy novels as if they were true with a capital T" prevented a continent from being bled dry for three decades....
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