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I simply can't think of any society throughout the history of man that has lacked a religion, in the sense of a shared metaphysics.
It seems to me you're arguing for something that's categorically impossible, so please explain.
Categorically impossible? In the sense that either the laws of logic, physics or biology prevent it? If you want an existence proof, I'm right here.
We know very rough correlates for religiosity in the human brain, so it's plausible enough to me that there's likely a biological means of removing such tendencies. At the very least, we have systems of metaphysics that have been stripped of supernatural elements, that would be philosophy. The fact that Wokism, as you initially brought up, is largely lacking in the same while being quite convincing and virulent, is proof of possibility.
There's obviously no society in existence that doesn't have a shared culture/memeplex, but that's not what I'm positing, it's the removal of supernatural bullshit from its underpinnings.
Precisely.
And much as I can understand it being frustrating from your point of view (I too used to think of myself as an atheist in this sense), I do not believe you are not religious, I just think you don't consider your religion one.
This is an absolute, complete and total lie. And any reasonable skeptic must concede that all knowledge lies on foundations of metaphysical assumption.
We can have this conversation in as much detail as you wish as this particular line of thought is something I have contemplated in detail, but I'll give the gist of it to save us time.
Let's take the sum of all scientific knowledge. That is, knowledge about nature obtained through empiricism. The truth of it live and dies on the validity of the scientific method and its accuracy in depicting the world or obtaining a true appraisal of it.
But this in turn requires of the world one absolute and undeniably metaphysical property: that the world is logically consistent. That is to say that the world obeys laws of causality, that the same causes produce the same effects and that observation has the ability to make accurate predictions. In other words, that miracles are not possible. That there is no Cartesian demon pulling the wool over our eyes.
This is not something science and logic can ascertain, since it is axiomatic, and it must be believed purely on reasonable faith. And it is also essentially metaphysical since it is a belief about the very structure of the world.
Let's damn empiricism for the sake of argument, and restrict our question to a priori knowledge. Mathematics and all the truths that can be obtained by logic.
These also rely on a base axiomatic presupposition, one that is made explicit by Randian Objectivism and other deduction edifices such as Praxeology: the faith in the very ability of deductive logic to produce truth. Yet again we arrive at a metaphysical axiom. A=A and other such base presuppositions that are, if quite reasonable in themselves, still faith based statements about the nature of the world.
All systems of thought have this issue, the grounding problem, and metaphysical skeptics such as myself deny the necessary truth of all statements that rely on merely reasonable grounding propositions, and therefore of all statements.
Consider Newtonian physics: a very useful model of the world, one that we use in engineering on the daily. But also one that we know from observation to be wrong and mere approximation. I believe all knowledge to be thus.
I understand your position (I think), but I am convinced it is untrue. For the aforementioned reasons. Positivism is a metaphysical doctrine that is, if not supernatural in the literal sense (since it's a kind of realism), certainly requires faith in an unfalsifiable metaphysical doctrine.
I will strongly state that I think this is an exceptionally useless, entirely non-standard definition of "religion".
An ideology or a philosophy is not a religion, there's a reason they're distinct words with specific connotations.
If I had to self-describe, then the description with the best tradeoff between verbosity and utility is "transhumanist classical liberal with libertarian tendencies".
I invite you to show me which aspect is necessarily religious. Transhumanism might laud the improvement of the human form and transcendence over its limitations, but there's nothing remotely supernatural about it. Wearing glasses, taking performance enhancing drugs or getting a pacemaker are innately transhumanist acts.
I am well aware that axioms exist, and must stand alone until you can show that they potentially arise from the implications of even fewer axioms. Or that value is inherently subjective, and there's nothing to decry as being objective false about them. Rationalists coined the phrase Orthogonality Hypothesis.
Fundamental assumptions about ontology/epistemics != supernatural beliefs. Those are defined by their claims of relevance to the material world, as well as (usually) a denial they can be defined or derived from the same laws of physics it obeys and willful denial that the preponderance of evidence empirically available or theoretically robust rules against it.
God as an Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent entity outside the laws of physics or empirical investigation is supernatural.
"God" as a superintelligent AGI or alien running us in a simulation is not.
A Communist who desires communism despite knowing the human costs and economic downsides is not succumbing to supernatural thinking. They're biting a bullet and admitting they accept that tradeoff. A Communist who claims that it's a more efficient and wealth-increasing/wellbeing-maximizing alternative to capitalism is wrong, and I would still not call this a supernatural belief.
I deny that faith is the appropriate/correct word for this association.
At the very least mathematicians and logicians go to great lengths to minimize such assumptions, hence why they bothered to prove that 1+1=2 in Peano Arithmetic as opposed to waving their hands and declaring it obvious.
And I suppose we found out disagreement.
You don't think metaphysical axioms are tantamount to the supernatural, whilst I see no difference between a flawed (that is to say any) model and a supernatural one in the literal sense.
Consider again Newtonian physics. Are forces not a supernatural object in all but name? What is the difference between reifying the behavior of waves into a set of fictitious spirits as opposed to doing so onto a single will except in the inherent naturalist tradeoff it offers between modes of thinking in terms of energetic efficiency?
Let's say we call all particles of the standard model a type of djinn and build a mythological understanding of the probabilities. Is such a model inherently less true? And if so why?
This is where you might say that we don't really worship leptons and that's the difference. But again I must disagree. Rationalism and positivism actually do require such a worship, inasmuch as people do seek to reorganize society along scientific principles and throw away superstitious traditions in favor of technocratic institutions. This methodological fetishism is worship in anything but name, and even in name at its extremities.
And though you seem to say this observation doesn't merit qualifying it with the religious label, all of the excesses of the worship of reason are immediately analogous to similar excesses of superstition, except in that they are unimpeded by the limitations we grew for these older forms of worship. The modernist zealot fancies himself a skeptic, but a zealot he is and a zealot he must be understood as.
What do you call holding a proposition to be true without evidence? And why is there a hierarchy between instances of such a behavior in your mind? Moreover how is it constituted?
If you define "spirits" as purely force-carrying particles or the perturbations of a field, then that's an isomorphic claim. Unfortunately, we already have a word for such entities, and if that's all they do, then spirit is a terrible term.
What exactly does calling them djinn achieve except for pointless word-play? Presumably the term indicates commonality in some degree with the kind that comes out of lamps. Any extra posited properties that have no bearing on observed outcomes automatically makes the model less useful, unless you declare that these djinn are exactly equivalent to fundamental particles, at which point you're not doing anything useful yourself. At most, you now have equations which are better framed by CTRL-F find and replace with normal terms, and you've just wasted everyone's time.
I wish you luck in your linguistic endeavors. Rationality is a means to an end and not an end in itself, not that you can't find some wacko who will claim the latter. It's a collection of cognitive techniques that is robustly useful for a very wide set of possible goals, be it improving human welfare, maximizing the output of paperclips or anything else really.
Most if not literally all the self-described Rationalists out there see it is an incredibly useful tool for achieving goals in reality, and the conserved core of the movement promotes such practices because for most ideologies out there, people are amenable to being talked out of their goals if it can be rationally shown to conflict with other more fundamental goals. A rational NIMBYist will at the very least come to understand and accept the same facts and figures a rat YIMBYist would (moderated by priors and trust), and the two of them might even find common cause if it can be sufficiently demonstrated that mixed density housing is an optimal solution to both the problem of walkable neighborhoods as well as creating sufficient housing everywhere such that all the miscellaneous miscreants don't congregate there. The aim is to at least get everyone on the same page regarding reality, even if they disagree on ideals or implications of facts, because such fundamental disagreement on reality is often the cause of much strife.
Two different concepts having parallels or overlaps is necessary but not sufficient to claim they're the same thing.
The "Cult of Reason" has also moderated itself in many important regards, such as few people advocating for command economies when it was once believed to be optimal by the best minds of the time. Every time scientific consensus is overturned or new discoveries are made, it adapts and repurposes.
I no more consider the excesses of Wokism damming for materialist ideology as a whole than you might think that milquetoast Western Christianity deserves opprobrium for the crimes of fundamentalist Islam. Turns out there are unneutered strains of religion out there, flourishing, and all the worse because it's based off bullshit.
At any rate, I'm going to recuse myself, I feel there's nothing left to add on my end, and the debate is largely word-games through and through.
The entire Enlightenment is made of wackos by this standard. In their own word. Which is kinda my problem with the notion.
The methodology on its own is just fine, it's using it to organize society that is tantamount to religion, and if you just want to restrict yourself to the methodology that's fine. But our disagreement is on the possibility of a society that is organized by no religion, and I'm sorry but all alternatives I know end up using positivism or antirealism as a stand in that both has the same tendencies and same epistemological problems.
At that point it seems reasonable to classify it the same way, and if we were so inclined I could actually give you a functionalist definition of the religious that fits both and sounds somewhat reasonable.
Suit yourself. This is a pretty dry topic anyhow.
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