This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Okay, but let's say I agree that meaning is "important" to human beings and necessary for human happiness and flourishing.
It does not follow that religion, any religion, is true. It just means that religious belief might make people happier.
This is not dissimilar to the argument some people have made here, that religion is good for society and therefore we should promote it regardless of whether it's true. We'd be better off if everyone was Christian, so go to church even if you don't actually believe in God.
That might work for some people, but it would not work for me. I won't claim I couldn't or wouldn't pretend if my life or livelihood depended on it, but otherwise, I just don't believe in God, I don't believe in supernatural or metaphysical explanations for anything, and therefore I am not going to subscribe to your newsletter (metaphorically speaking).
Will humanity be sadder and find less meaning if religion goes away? Maybe so! But your argument still looks a lot like "Therefore we should all pretend to believe even if we don't, because we'll be better off that way."
I think the most compelling and scariest element of H.P. Lovecraft's supernatural yet profoundly atheistic mythos was not the unspeakable Elder Gods (who were not really "gods"), but that the underlying theme of all his works was that humans are an accident and the universe fundamentally does not care about us. We have no higher purpose or meaning, and if we all got wiped out in an asteroid strike tomorrow, no one would notice or care.
This is (minus the Elder Gods) basically what I believe. And I acknowledge that for some people, that can seem pretty scary and nihilistic. For me, it just is, and I find plenty of meaning in my life while acknowledging that I'm just an infinitesimal blip in the here and now. Sure, it would be nice to believe there is an omnipotent deity who loves each one of us individually and promises an eternal afterlife, but I can't force myself to believe this because it would be nice. Maybe instrumentally we should try to convince the proles to believe this, but to me, that seems awfully cynical and more likely to just end up in the same bad place religion often does.
I think this attitude probably above all proves the basic fact that the Enlightenment effort failed. This failure was despite the fact of the promulgation of the ability to manipulate our environment with its ideals, as in, we as human beings were made one with the environment that we were supposed to study (the ‘phenomenological’ world, as Kant would express) and hence the idea of conscious experience (the ‘noumenon’ representing qualitative experience, the ‘self’) was somehow shifted into the categories of the empirical world; we began to see our conscious-experience as just another ‘thing’ we should study with the mind instead of it being a top-down observer which had to enter into that world of materiality to understand it.
And consequently, as we were skeptical of that empirical, phenomenological world, we were skeptical of our own conceptions of uniqueness—we began to collapse that luster of what experience really meant as a liberated agentic ‘force’ which could impact reality as mere dumb things couldn’t, we made the sharpness of the edges of the conscious mind in comparison to the dullness of the mundane things around us analogous to those mundane things, just with added processes hitherto unknown that were compossible with those mundane things, and were probably just another mundane thing that we hadn’t categorized yet. Hence we stopped thinking of people as having ‘souls’, but just being flesh-automatons piloted by electricity. Lovecraft, or other fictional views of the world in this stead, just espouse the same basic idea of life inherently having no pattern, no uniqueness, that if we were all swept away tomorrow it wouldn’t matter—and yet this was seen as something that should be accepted unflinchingly! As just an extrapolation of the inevitable axiom of the Enlightenment project, to seek truth wherever it was, even as this truth hurt to look at.
And yet that ignores the fact that the methodology of this conclusion might be faulty on its own terms, for if we are to assume human flourishing as related to social norms is also a fact of life, a fact as true as the fact that we have evolved from single-celled organisms billions of years ago, then we aren’t to flinch from that, either. If we are to assume that the idea of the pursuit of truth is worthwhile because it pursues some ‘good’, with this good being expressed in terms of human flourishing (since the idea of ‘there’s no pattern in this world, we are alone’ would be antithetical to the idea of formulating the pursuit of truth in any way beyond a utilitarian mode), then that also would carry for those social norms being good for the same goal. For if we are to abstract truths from their ‘metaphysical’ qualities as the materialist extrapolation of the Enlightenment project says we should do, then there is no difference between these two facts after all, and if one (the pursuit of flourishing) even supersedes the fact of pursuing truth that could diminish the flourishing of the first, then we must necessarily choose the former—since, as said, the only motivation towards pursuing truth whatsoever would be to maximize the pursuit of flourishing to begin with. The latter is embedded in the former, not the other way around.
And yet, again, this is only something brought up if the Enlightenment project’s conclusions are bought on their own terms for the sake of argument. There are reasons to even reject the conclusion that materialism is well-founded, especially from the skepticism that regarded us as believing in materialism in the first place (due to being skepticism of our own skepticism, for instance—a ‘critique of pure reason’, if you will). Not to mention the fact that if the truths of this reality and the evolution of our subsequent conscious minds would be based on the materialistic framework, then accepting the naturalistic model of the world because our conscious minds (operating on a process of materialistic accidents) would similarly be irrational. Our conscious minds in totality, as a thing-in-itself, should be ‘beyond’ the phenomenology expressed and filtered through that consciously-reflected sense experience; to attempt to understand our conscious minds through that world would be an instance of relative self-reference, which could cause loads of paradoxes due to circularity and things like that.
More options
Context Copy link
But can you really justify your belief in truth when it comes to our social purpose in life, our social feeling in the world, our emotional health and our deepest evolutionary nature?
I sense that you are a “truth terminalist”: you believe that truth is our terminal value. It’s easy to come to this view because of the vast utilitarian benefit of truth. When we use truth instrumentally, we can make life easier and more pleasant: better food, less disease, better mental health treatment, etc. But the instrumental use of truth is not truth valued unto itself. In fact there are wildly different terminal values at root here.
Truth valued unto itself would mean that it’s as good an idea to teach a toddler about the horrors of rabies infections and typhus, as it is to teach a toddler to be loved. Truth valued unto itself would mean that a life where everyone memorizes facts despite deep emotional anguish is better than a life with less trivia but perfect emotional health. Truth valued unto itself means that suicide and murder can be done without guilt, because humans no longer have any rational reason to listen to the voice in their head that has hitherto introduced guilt. “There is no rational reason not to murder, only a social-evolutionary reason that I can ignore if I really desire to,” says the truth terminalist. Truth terminalism means that we should sacrifice untold human life if it means the acquisition of a single factoid. It would mean that the scientist who counts blades of grass repeatedly is as valuable as the scientist finding a cure for cancer.
Truth terminalism is, in actual fact, not really subscribed by any living being on earth. Instead, they subscribe to some shade of “pleasure/good terminalism” in either a stoic or epicurean or ontological sense. Now if what I’ve written is true, this means you actually need a utilitarian reason based on the good/pleasant to justify your lack of participation in non-factual social movements which produce preferable emotional states and communities. “It’s not true” is not a rational justification here.
(An ancillary argument: religions create in the heart of the adherent a practical knowledge of love, devotion, and community. This knowledge is true in the sense that there are actually true social facts being collected. In what way is this information less true than the movement of the stars? Some angelic being observing earth would see no difference in truth value between social information and the movement of the stars.)
I think you are abusing "rationalist" here. I do not consider myself a pure rationalist in the way this forum usually uses the term. I do, however, try to use rational reasoning, and while I wouldn't consider myself a "truth terminalist" exactly, I do consider truth to be a higher value than, say, pleasure or comfort. Of course that does not, as you imply, mean going around like some autistic robot spouting random true-but-horrible facts at random children.
So I find your argument that people who place a higher value on truth than whatever your justification is for accepting religion to be valuing truth only for its utilitarian value weak. And even if you could prove I am merely utilitarian in valuing truth, it still gives me no reason to believe in things I have no reason to believe in except they would make me feel better.
But why not? If truth is indeed a higher value than comfort, or equanimity, or peace of mind, or any other potential terminus, then it would be more important that we fill every animal with facts rather than wellbeing. That would be for their greater good, because knowledge of truth is the greatest good. We would desire to raise non-functioning children who play a very mean game of jeopardy, even if they have poor wellbeing.
This is kind of circular in the way it is phrased. If a belief is conducive to greater personal and social happiness, and if our terminus value is something like “greatest happiness and human flourishment”, then it intuitively makes sense that we believe the thing which maximizes our most important value. There would be no reason to cling to non-beneficial truth, because we already established that goodness is a superseding value over truth and truth is merely instrumental to goodness. The “reason” for a happiness-optimizing belief is that it optimizes happiness. There is no “reason” to believe something that is true-but-useless, as it doesn’t bring us closer to what is most important.
Valuing truth more than comfort or equanimity does not mean that its value is infinite relative to comfort or equanimity. Nor does it mean "filling every animal with facts rather than wellbeing."
I do not believe that you are in good faith failing to understand this. I think you think that playing "gotcha" with ridiculous straw men is some sort of winning debate move.
Maybe you can simply choose to believe whatever is most instrumentally beneficial to you, but I can't.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I agree it doesn't follow that a religion is true, necessarily. However my main claim is not that meaning is important, but that materialism is ultimately false. You haven't addressed that here.
Perhaps I haven't fleshed out my argument enough, but my stance is in fact quite dissimilar from that argument. I do believe in God, and supernatural beings such as angels and demons. I think the whole 'psychological' argument from pro-religion types, while pointing to important considerations, is sadly quite flawed and does lead to self delusion.
However a related argument, the one that convinced me, is learning to trust experiential evidence or knowledge. Due to our upbringing in Enlightenment rationalism, we are trained to only trust a sort of consensus, 'objective' view. Or in other words we've learned to distrust and disbelieve any of our own experiential, or dare I say empirical, qualia in favor of only believing things that can be confirmed via repeated scientific experiments, or the consensus making machines of our society.
My point is that this 'objective' reality is, once truly dug into, false. The scientific materialist worldview is full of misconceptions and outright lies.
To put forth a bit more of an argument in favor of the supernatural, I'll quote from this article on angels and demons which, while a bit out there, makes an excellent point here:
Anyway, hope this clarifies things a bit. And I genuinely am happy you seem to be able to live with and find meaning in a nihilistic framework. I don't doubt that some, or even many people, can. That still doesn't mean that framework is true.
I am not trying to defend materialism, as while I am a materialist, I could be convinced it's false if I ever witness a shred of evidence to contradict it. You will not convince me I should philosophically "reason" myself into believing God is real or that angels or demons exist even if there is no evidence for them, though.
More options
Context Copy link
Scientific materialism is dominant because even the religious use it instrumentally to figure things out.
You could prove materialism false with one good demon.
“Not reproducible on demand” ah well so it’s not quite like a lion I can go observe in 30 minutes at the local zoo if I wanted to is it?
It’s more like Sagan’s garage dragon I guess. So real, so very hard to detect. Very reproducible, but very shy about observation.
The rejoinder to that, which I have seen on various places including SSC, is "If I saw God/an angel/a demon, I would prefer to believe I was hallucinating, or going crazy, or it was a trick or hoax, or some kind of material phenomenon, or even aliens, but I would not believe in the supernatural".
The rejoinder to that is religious people putting words in the mouths of nonreligious people and imagining that they would say something convenient for the religious people.
If you showed me a demon, it wouldn't prove the existence of the supernatural, but it would be evidence, and the weight of evidence could convince me like it would for anything else. If you showed me one demon for a minute and took it away before I could take a photo, ask someone else to look at it, or otherwise rule out mundane explanations, I wouldn't believe, but that's because your evidence is pretty bad, not because nonbelievers always ignore the evidence.
Also, not all supernatural things are equal. If you showed me a demon, I'd believe in powerful beings that can do weird things. I might still wonder if they're demons or aliens, and I wouldn't believe in transsubstantiation.
More options
Context Copy link
Bayesian priors lean strongly towards some mental quirk, yes.
That’s why it’s important to have a good demon evidence for more than just say me to witness one time. Same goes for say Bigfoot or UFOs.
The bible is chock full of miraculous deeds to wow the crowd so don’t get cute by citing one verse. And that verse sounds pretty ironic based on the whole bit where Jesus did rise from the dead.
More options
Context Copy link
Religion claims more than "there are beings one cannot reliably detect or explain using the mainstream framework". It claims absolute metaphysical significance. Not merely that 0,1% of experiences that seem to fall out of the materialistic framework do really fall ouside its jurisdiction, but also that they are 99,9-100% of what really matters.
The audacity of such claims is why my prior would be "aliens" or "I'm crazy", not "Lord God Almighty". Granted, if I get multiple people to confirm that someone within my circle of acquaintances really came back from the dead, I'll probably act as if that did happen (while acknowledging that no one will believe us).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Well no, not quite like a lion. They are beings of spirit, fundamentally different from us physical beings. And by many accounts much older and wilier.
Besides, there are plenty of people who have personal evidence of demons active in their lives. There are plenty of recordings of ghosts and strange phenomenon if yo know where to look. Again, the point is that scientific evidence requires reproducibility on demand.
Not actually true. We study things we are not able to reproduce all the time. Scientific experiments should be reproducible, but science is not only limited to experiments. Observational science and experimental science are both subsets of science and both can produce scientific evidence.
If astrophysicists detect some kind of pulse from deep space, that is evidence of some kind of phenomenon even if we can't reproduce it. They may look for other such incidences and may keep looking where it came from to see if it happens again, and certainly that will help gather information, but the initial incident and whatever recordings and so on were taken is still scientific evidence. It might not be enough to work out what caused it, but that isn't the same thing.
Recordings of ghosts are scientific evidence, for example. But just like with the pulse from deep space, one of the things the recording might be evidence for is equipment malfunction, or a hoax, or a poorly built camera or antenna, or yes, actual ghosts, or space aliens. That's why you then study the various proposed theories and try to gather more evidence (which does not have to be the same type of evidence), to discard or strengthen theories.
Even once we had a full understanding of ghosts, or black holes then we might be able to reproduce them, using some kind of technology but it certainly isn't a requirement. The power demands to reproduce a black hole might simply be too much for humanity to ever manage, even if we understood the mechanism 100% perfectly.
Reproducible experimental evidence is strong, because it shows that something works the same way under the same conditions, and then you can alter the conditions and see what changes, which gives you more accessible information, but it certainly isn't a requirement for science itself.
What you're missing is that observations are weak scientific evidence and have to be weighed. If you look outside and see the sun, and everyone else in your town can do the same, then even though blind people cannot see the sun, that is good evidence the sun exists as an observable entity. But if 99.99999% of people looked up and did not see the sun, then the observational evidence of the remaining tiny percentage has to be weighed against that. Is it a hallucination? Are they lying? Is it that they are mutants who can see a wavelength of light everyone else cannot? The fact that most people do not see the sun is ALSO scientific evidence.
<Pedantry> Actually, blind people can feel the heat from the sun, and use it to navigate. A better example would be the moon, stars, or planets.</pedantry>
Sure, sure. Conceded.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What is “spirit”? How does it interact with the physical world?
Jesus healed the sick by casting out demons. Or forgiving them for some sin.
Now we try mood stabilizers and antibiotics.
People having personal evidence in their own head is just not remotely convincing because there’s no check on BS or delusion.
“Scientific” as a modifier for “evidence” is a red herring. If there were actually good evidence via say a record of paranormal activity that’s a Nobel prize waiting to happen.
Not exactly sure but basically it's associated with the heavens, with mind, with immaterial or supermaterial forces.
Also, it's hard to have a discussion and honestly explain things I believe to you when you keep calling my beliefs BS. Just a note. Also your name is referencing a Catholic monk, just FYI ;)
The fact that you don’t know (and nobody else does either) is kind of the whole problem.
History is full of great thinkers who were incredibly devout. Mostly because nearly everyone was religious and academic work and institutions were often formally associated with a church.
Which makes it all the more striking that we never quite got any good evidence for the god stuff (or alchemy, despite Newton’s best efforts).
I was raised religious. It was extremely emotionally difficult to honestly investigate the evidence for and against my beliefs. But that was the actually the hardest part, because once you don’t privilege the hypothesis the evidence points strongly away from religious factual claims.
There’s no polite way in most societies to indicate even indirectly that someone’s religion is obviously BS. It has a privileged position. Now there are exceptions like Christians criticizing Islam, or Mormonism being judged extra kooky, but overall religious people in the US are used to having thin skin about their sacred beliefs. We “militant” atheists even get lambasted by other nonbelievers for being unsophisticated and uncouth.
It’s actually the exact same dynamic as poking holes in the Santa story for kids—socially it’s unthinkable to puncture the collective myth. Don’t take that away from them! It’s a fun belief (used by parents to incentivize good behavior when they can’t observe behavior and without it being direct bribery).
Religious people tend to find that comparison extremely offensive, but that very reaction is the proof of the dynamic.
A spade is a spade. If your beliefs had strong evidence you could simply relish blasting apart my skepticism, same as any other internet discussion.
Me telling you your belief system is almost certainly BS due to a lack of evidence is me treating you like an adult who can employ reason and cares about having true beliefs. Anything else is the polite bigotry of low expectations.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link