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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   25440 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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About a week ago, I read some of the Old Testament for the first time since childhood. One idea which stuck out to me is that if you took this setting and removed God from the equation, none of this would make sense. I'm not talking about blatantly mystical things like the Great Flood or Eden, but rather the full world in which the Old Testament takes place -- a world of constant cruelty set against the endless desert sands and mysterious starry skies, and ancient genealogies with white-beareded men who appear as old as the world itself. Maybe God didn't strike down Sodom and Gomorrah, but city-wide destruction and mass rape and incest were evidently common in the ancient world, and you can feel this need to rationalize the ancient world and make it less tragic is a very strong theme in the Old Testament. Without God, it's something like a living nightmare.

When life gets really bad, we open up to religion in surprising ways. Best analogy is like... we're all houses built on shitty foundations. Sometimes a storm comes and chips at our eaves, but we repair it and we're fine. It's not until your entire house tumbles down that you can replace the foundation for a better one. Religion generally takes hold in moments of immense weakness, and makes us far stronger for the remainder of life. Zoomer tradcaths really are just larping because they haven't had that moment yet. It can only be a LARP until that happens, IMO. Faith isn't really irrational so much as sub-rational.

Some of the best commentary on dealing with (especially) old Testament literalism is from David Bentley Hart. The long and short of it is that the Old Testament should be read similarly to how The Odyssey and The Iliad are read. It's a highly stylized, almost poetic epic tale that uses vibrant language and imagery to convey its points. It's not a blow by blow catalog of facts. Add on top of this the translation-upon-translation issues and you can account for the fact that 900 year old men were popping out kids left and right when they weren't running away from Rapin'Burg after the Slip-'N-Slide from the sky overflowed.

Sometimes a storm comes and chips at our eaves, but we repair it and we're fine. It's not until your entire house tumbles down that you can replace the foundation for a better one. Religion generally takes hold in moments of immense weakness

This is a pretty silly summarization. People become religious under stress since they're grasping at straws for any modicum of control they can find, and the only one they've got is hoping placebos work. Keeping on those placebos afterwards is somewhere between neutral if they otherwise keep their behavior the same, to severely negative if they e.g. think prayer is more powerful than medicine

I mean, n of 1 here, but I became religious slowly over the course of years and it all started by getting deep into analytic philosophy and rationalism in an attempt to merely "be better at thinking." I'll spare you my superhero internet warrior origin story, but my path to Christ started in a firmly modern, PMC, intellectualist garden.

The ironic part is that I also agree with you. Use whatever version of "no atheists in foxholes" aphorism you want, but it is true that a lot of people turn to religion in types of trouble. You can cope by gesturing at placebo and self-serving cognitive biases if you like, but doesn't it remain knee-slappingly silly to imagine the idea of someone shouting "I"D BETTER UPDATE MY PRIORS" when they're on a plane with two blown engines.

I became religious slowly over the course of years and it all started by getting deep into analytic philosophy and rationalism in an attempt to merely "be better at thinking."

I find this a bit hard to take seriously. It's like if somebody told me they spent a lot of time analyzing economic models, and in the end they're now certain that Soviet Communism is the only correct choice. I don't know you're specific path, but option 1 is that you believe the superstitious parts of Christianity, in which case your attempts to be better at thinking is severely misaligned. Option 2 is that you believe in some watered-down deistic form of "cultural Christianity", and are arbitrarily ignoring the vast gulf between your beliefs and what most actual Christians believe.

Keeping on those placebos afterwards is somewhere between neutral if they otherwise keep their behavior the same, to severely negative if they e.g. think prayer is more powerful than medicine

It seems like you've never been around an intelligent religious person before. "Thinking prayer is more powerful than medicine" is not a problem that comes up. These people are essentially like you and me, except they have resolute moral standards and a shocking tolerance for hardship. Call it a placebo all you want, but don't allow yourself to forget: The crucial part of the "placebo" is that it actually works.

It seems like you've never been around an intelligent religious person before.

This might sound a bit snide, but "intelligence" and "religiosity" tend to be anti correlated. This applies to both the baseline question of "are you religious, yes or no", as well as for level of zealotry. I'm sure I've met quite a few intelligent religious people, but religion hasn't been a big part of their lives and they're mostly watered-down deists.

The crucial part of the "placebo" is that it actually works.

Every lie incurs a debt to the truth.

That's all irrelevant because groups that lucked into right beliefs thrive, those that had bad luck die out.

Thus over time, the rules of the groups that survive start to look pretty wise.

That's all irrelevant because groups that lucked into right beliefs thrive, those that had bad luck die out.

If you accept this idea, what does that tell you about religion's irreversible decline then?

That the groups that dropped religion are in the process of dying out, through hilariously low birthrates.

Ah yes, the "by 2300 we'll all be Amish" idea. Somehow I doubt this will come to pass.

I don't think by 2300 we'll all be Amish. I do think that by 2300 there will be practically no seventh-generation secular humanists, though.

Does it matter that much? Memes have the nice ability to travel between and across generations.

Most of the fertility rate collapse happened while the US was highly religious.

Things have changed. Industrial revolution, science, you ever heard about those ?

It's all irrelevant now. The bleeding edge of humanity is close to fulfilling their purpose which is bringing into being a mechanical civilization that's going to replace our own. Logic of economy and competition will then ensure our gradual deprecation.

Brings to mind Eliezer Yudkowsky on Rationality: "No one begins to truly search for the Way until their parents have failed them, their gods are dead, and their tools have shattered in their hand." So it seems this is hardly directional.

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