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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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I've said it before and I'll say it again. Christianity is at least as unbacked by evidence and reason as transgender ideology. Believing that a certain man 2000 years ago was the son of god and rose from the dead is at least as unbacked by evidence and reason as believing that a man can become a woman by calling himself a woman and doing surgeries. But many people here on The Motte give Christianity a pass because it's really old and really popular and so it seems "normal", because they like its cultural/political connotations, and probably in some cases because they were raised Christian.

But I don't give Christianity a pass. When people tell me that they are Christian, I have pretty much the same reaction as I have when people try to convince me that a trans woman is a real woman. In both cases, I think that their beliefs are ludicrous and deeply irrational.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Christianity is at least as unbacked by evidence and reason as transgender ideology.

It has much more of a track record of encouraging adaptive behavior and institutions though.

If Christianity is not true then I don't care about what kind of record it has at encouraging adaptive behavior and institutions. I don't want to build society on a bedrock of delusions.

If Christianity is not true then I don't care about what kind of record it has at encouraging adaptive behavior and institutions.

That is a value judgment (arguably a very Christian one) you're entitled to make. It's not just a fact.

I don't want to build society on a bedrock of delusions.

I'd prefer a non-deluded, rational secular humanism where we dispense with all superstitions and life is improved in every way by it, as was promised to me by Dawkins and Harris (PBUT) at a formative point in my teens.

But I'm no longer certain that truth and value are the same (especially when it comes to an individual life). And I'm not sure that option is available. What I see in that clip are dueling "delusions", except one has a longer track record of encouraging kids and pro-social behavior.

What I see in that clip are dueling "delusions", except one has a longer track record of encouraging kids and pro-social behavior.

Humanity is not stuck in the ridiculous position of having to choose between the rock of trans-ideology and the hard place of Christianity. Choosing these two specific species of insanity is eliding the fact there are plenty of less insane alternatives.

Name a less insane society organizing religion then.

We know what the cult of reason begets, we tried that one pretty thoroughly since 1789. Positivism turned out a lot more insane than Abrahamism.

You're not going to get out of the need for a metaphysics. Better men than you have tried and they all failed. Religion is, for better or worse, not optional. The very rise of the Woke is proof of it.

Name a less insane society organizing religion then.

I deny the need for religion in the first place. Or if there's a "need" for it in the psyche of the average human, poor thing, it needs to be excised, not fed.

Religion is, for better or worse, not optional. The very rise of the Woke is proof of it.

I obviously disagree, even if Wokism has plenty of traits of religion.

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.

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.

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