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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   32920 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 2, 2025

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Sure, and way more people in today's America genuinely, deeply believe in mental illness than believe in demonic possession. We'll see more explanations from the dominant religion of Scientism than we will from other religions. Even pious Catholics acknowledge the dominion of Science and Psychology, even most self-identified Catholics don't really believe in demonic possession as something that might happen to them today.

Though, you're right in that even within their respective paradigms, mental illness is much more common than demonic possession, and a "mental illness" like mild ADHD isn't much compared to possession. So maybe a better analogy would be if we had a survey asking people if they "are a sinner?" Far more right wingers would say they are sinners than left wingers, this would not reflect any underlying reality about sin.

I just don't really accept that "mental illness" is much of an explanation for anything, divorced from generalized statistics about outcomes, which are much more mixed and inconclusive and mostly gets into a series of No-True-Scotsman and Motte-and-Bailey games around what is actually meant by Red Tribe and Blue Tribe. There's something "the enemy is both strong and weak" about saying leftism is the cause and effect of mental illness, while also saying the left controls all the levels of power and all the commanding heights of industry and academia and culture.

the dominant religion of Scientism

There are a couple of phrases which make me discount pretty much anything people are using them to say. This is one of them.

This is just a sneer, isn't it?

Can you put some meat on it?

"Scientism" is itself a sneer, and insofar as it means anything, is usually a false accusation claiming that people worship science or use science when they should be using feelings instead. Of course since its actual meaning is vague, anyone who uses it can deny meaning what they are using it to to mean and there's no way to prove them wrong.

Do you doubt the dogmatic power of positivism or are you an adherent for whom "it's just the truth"?

Do we do false dichotomies here, or do we do false dichotomies here?

Any other answer is acceptable, I was genuinely asking. It just seems mysterious to be allergic to the concept of scientism in a world where this building exists.

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