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Notes -
https://benthams.substack.com/p/hordes-of-vultures-descend-on-bostrom
Bentham’s Bulldog discusses a recent apology letter from Nick Bostrom for saying the n-word as well as saying that blacks have lower average intelligence in an offensive way in the mid-nineties. Bostrom also says in the apology letter that he’s not really a supporter of eugenics as some claim. Despite apologizing, Bostrom is attacked still for reiterating he believes in IQ gaps and “handwaving” about eugenics.
I used to look at the declining number of Christians in the U.S. to conclude that people were becoming more rational.
Now I realize that religiosity has just transferred -- slavery was the Original Sin, racism is the Devil, and we are all guilty unless we Repent (become anti-racist) and Jesus (black people) alone can forgive us.
It's so tiring.
No, it hasn’t. A list of parallels doesn’t make something a religion.
They aren’t even good examples! Racism isn’t an entity. Anti-racism lacks various key features of Christian repentance, such as securing an afterlife. Black people are not serving as a proxy for Christ the Redeemer and His voluntary self-sacrifice.
The buck basically stops at “both these groups have some idea of blame and atonement,” which is not exactly unique. Capitalism has debt; that doesn’t make it religious. Game theory’s tit-for-tat strategy doesn’t pigeonhole researchers as zealots.
It doesn't have to be a 1:1 match with Christianity to be a religion.
Religion tends to imply far-reaching moral claims and ways of living organized around mystical / supernatural ideas. Anti-racism/progressivism may be distinctly christian, and may make significant moral claims, but it isn't a religion - it doesn't have supernatural claims, nor does it provide a grounding for all or even most moral claims.
It's claimed to be a religion because of the combination of moral dedication and seeming wrongness - as if people follow it religiously because of a 'religious impulse' to believe strong moral claims at the expense of correctness. This doesn't work because wokeness makes specific, non-mystical claims - calling it a religion doesn't actually rebut the claims (it'd come closer if woke people believed in an Anti-Racism Allfather that lived in the sun, but it doesn't!).
Progressivism has those.
Modify this to "unfalsifiable ideas", and Progressivism has those.
No, it's claimed to be a religion because people have faith in it.
I'd say the claims are plenty "mystical". They don't need to be supernatural to be unfalsifiable, supra-rational, and they are definately used as the basis for moral reasoning that is not otherwise justified.
That isn't what makes a religion. Me having faith Man Utd will not be good for X years after Sir Alex doesn't make a football team a religion.
A religion is I think, a sub variant of an ideology, one with a supernatural element. A communist zealot and a Christian zealot will exhibit similar enforcing behaviors because both are expousing ideologies on how they think people should behave. Whether that is because they think that people should do X because God gave the 10 Commandments or because Marx said "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" doesn't impact their enforcing behavior really.
But only one is a religion, otherwise the term is too broad to be meaningful. For example it's probably tricky to discredit Communism by claiming Marx never existed.
Which isn't a claim on which is better or more true because the value judgement as to whether Marx was right is subjective, but it's a different kind of subjective as to whether a supernatural being exists.
Now it is certainly possible Marxism could BE a religion, if he was said to possess some kind of supernatural insight or was the avatar of a God or other mystical entity and that is why his ideas should be listened to.
Why does the supernatural idea matter, and how does one define "supernatural"?
If I claim that god is the substrate the natural world is built on, does that make him not supernatural any more? One presumes not. But when Marxists claim that iron laws of history demand that human civilization move through exactly one path with no possible deviations, why is that meaningfully less supernatural than me claiming God as substrate?
Both I and the Marxist are making unfalsifiable claims that the physical world is determined by metaphysical, unobservable, unfalsifiable forces. Being unable to prove the existence of those forces, we nonetheless both precommit to treating them as axiomatic. In other words, we put our faith in them, and act accordingly. Your "faith" in Man Utd is not based on metaphysical claims that take precedence over the physical, and that is why it is a poor comparison here; also, you've seen Man Utd play, while I have never seen God and the Marxist has never seen the classless society.
If I could prove to your satisfaction that the man named Jesus existed, I find it doubtful that you would promptly convert. Whether Jesus existed or not is hardly the issue, but rather whether what his metaphysical claims were true, no? And is it not exactly the same with Marx? The purported Jesus made specific claims about the supernatural: that it existed, and that as a result we should take specific actions and adopt specific values. Marx likewise made specific claims about the supernatural: that it did not exist, and that as a result we should take specific actions and adopt specific values.
I do not think there is a functional difference between asserting that a supernatural divinity exists, and asserting that history is bound by iron laws and can only proceed along one path.
What, specifically, is added to the analysis by separating positive spiritual claims into one category, and negative spiritual claims into the other category? What observed outcomes demand such a separation? The context of this conversation is about the label "religion" specifically used as a pejorative. Well and good, so what does this special label allow us to focus on that would otherwise pass unnoticed? Corrupting effects on reason? Additional zealotry? Violence or aggression? Why is the separate label useful?
The modern Atheist movement was based on the idea that religion was irrational, and often or even always harmful. Point me to an irrationality or a harm that any religion has ever caused or advocated, that materialist ideologies cannot match or surpass. You claim that labeling Marxism a religion makes the term too broad to be meaningful. Why, specifically? What is lost through such an application? What, specifically, does "Religion" by your definition do that ideology does not?
A non-religous ideology can absolutely be irrational. It can absolutely cause great harm. No question there.
If you could prove God exists then you have proved that Christianity is to a greater or lesser extent true. If you prove a classless society can exist, that doesn't impact whether it should.
If you could prove to me that Jesus existed and did the various miracles associated with him, then that fundamentally would change my view on reality in a major way. Proving communism works wouldn't. People can live in small communes, at small scales communism clearly can exist. If some AI assisted version of communism actually worked i'd be surprised but it wouldn't fundamentally change anything.
The difference is I think that God could in theory change the rules to say anything. The teachings and commandments are His, the judgments are His. It would still be Christianity if in a miracle every Bible tomorrow added an 11th commandment. Or changed all the others in the blink of an eye. You would (correctly I think!) probably see that as proof God existed. Perhaps that He was intervening to correct what man had written or whatever interpretation you might put on it.
If we change what Marx wrote to endorse free markets and the capital class then it is no longer communism at all. What the idea is (true or false) is what it is evaluated on.
Where the knowledge comes from is a critical part of religions, whereas if Marx was proven not to have existed and Bob Smith had written Das Kapital then nothing really changes, whether the ideas work or not would not change.
Would Christianity really be the same to you if it were proven God didn't exist? That it was just a set of rules for living written by men with no deific inspiration? Doesn't that change the fundamental idea of what Christianity even is? Or if it were revealed the Devil wrote the Bible to put evil into the heart of humans. Would you just shrug and say, but it works, so i will still go along with the commandments?
The source of knowledge or truth in Christianity is arguably the most important bit. Whether that source really exists is a major component of the faith. Christianity without God is just an ideology. Maybe it has good rules for living, but its no longer the same.
The source of knowledge in communism is nearly irrelevant. If we discovered Marx was a lie then communism is still just an ideology.
None of this necessarily changes how zealots behave just to be clear. As for why I draw the distinction, the argument made was that wokism was a religion, and I think that is incorrect and diminshes our understanding. Wokism like communism is built on materialism, and while enforcing behaviours will be the same either way (because those don't change whether you believe in God or racism), its fundamental conceptual building blocks and how it will mutate in the future are not the same as if its precepts were derived from a supernatural entity or not.
I'm not arguing it not being a religion makes it objectively better or worse in other words, just that it makes it different. It's likely to mutate and fragment much faster than Christianity did for example because it lacks an overarching "eye in the sky" and even that didn't entirely protect Christianity from fragmentation.
Wokism not being a religion won't necessarily impact how individuals behave, but does change how the movement overall will alter over time in my opinion.
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Yeah, and my point is 'unfalsifiable ideas' is a much broader concept than 'mystical and supernatural ideas'. A supernatural idea is 'God created the universe, piece by piece, and you go to hell if you don't believe in god'. One example of an unfalsifiable belief is: "everyone hates me. no matter how much they say they like me, they secretly hate me". another is "everyone is fundamentally good. no matter how many evil acts they commit, their nature is goodness".
If "faith" means "believing in something that is false", or "believing in something that's not falsifiable" then sure. If faith means something like 'choosing to believe in something even though you acknowledge it can't ever be proven, because you recognize it's your duty to believe', then ... no, progressives would claim their beliefs are normal, observable, and true, and not 'held on faith'. And the sense in which faith relates to religion seems more the latter to me.
Progressivism is, like, a set of beliefs that some people believe in for social/tribal reasons. It also gives some people a sense of community and purpose. Religions also do that, and it's "like" a religion in that sense. But in that sense Apple as an employer is also a religion, as is heavy metal music, so eh.
This belief is not merely unfalsifiable; it is supernatural. It posits a good which exists outside observable reality. The same is true for progressive beliefs.
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