ILX Religiosity and Spirituality and Agnosticity and Atheicity Poll

my personal experience is that a significant amount (whether they are bored, overeducated MDivs from YDS looking for someone to discuss theology with, or Quaker meeting houses or Tibetan Buddhist centres) *are* willing to engage in and encourage that kind of thought.

I accept that this is your personal experience, but people that go to tibetan buddhist centres and quaker meeting houses are an extremely tiny minority in the US. those are the places that encourage that type of thinking, but the 40,000+ a week megachurch most definitely is not.

I think you're possibly right about the casual religious person in the UK, but I think the 'casual religious' person in the US is a lot different. The default isn't a benign "I sort of vaguely believe but I don't know what in particular I do". They might not ask questions about their personal beliefs or certainly not theology, but that's because they're hard-wired to accept it all as literal. I think this is the problem with your grouping. That 'subset' is not really a subset at all. It's a majority.
xpost to kate

OK, maybe I lived in a strange, tiny bubble when I lived in the States (and that strange tiny bubble was called New York and New England) but my experiences were really not atypical in that bubble.

Well, if more than 3 people around you knew "Common People" when it was released, then yes, that was an atypical bubble. :p

I like religion. It imbues all the boring day to day shit I have to do with cosmic importance.

Given that New York is, like, the third largest state in the US by population, it's a pretty big bubble, to be honest.

But yeah, given the vast cultural differences between different areas of the US, I have never understood why they didn't just divide it up into 4 or 5 autonomous zones and have done with it.

Personally, I can't imagine anything more mind-numbingly boring that discussing baseball, but then again, I find religion and spirituality and the vast differences between people's experiences of it so utterly fascinating that I'll waste my entire weekend debating it, so that's why there's chocolate and vanilla.

I have never understood why they didn't just divide it up into 4 or 5 autonomous zones and have done with it.

Because Abe Lincoln said we are not allowed to. (A sentiment that a majority of ILXers actually agrees with, if their responses in the politics thread when I brought up the idea of "Why don't Texas, Mississippi et al. just secede already?" are any indication.)

i would actually, sincerely be in favor of dividing the country. carve out nw based on that ecotopia book (no. california, oregon, washington). give gulf states (including all of florida) to fundamentalist christians. the main reason i would want to do this is b/c america's constant cheerleading for itself is so embarrassing. a breakup is in order.

in thirty years the white majority will have died off, and the young people of today who were raised on web 2.0, twitter, etc., will have grown into adults who could give a fuck about THE GAYS, GUNS, ABORTION and all of that other shit. then it will be safe to put the mess back together.

counterpoint, though

I would not, only out of vested interest, because Ohio, despite the Democratic stronghold of Cuyahoga County where I live*, would end up in "God, Guns and Gays" country for sure.

Here's how I understand the Virgin Birth:

You can try and try to find God and have union with God and meditate and pray and do good deeds and do all these things but ultimately there is nothing a human can do to achieve that union because it is literally a God-given fact. All that remains is for it to be realized. This is the Grace of God; it's effortless on the part of the human. Yet pride (and yes, especially spiritual pride) gets in the way. Jesus was a from a virgin birth because no MAN could have been responsible for delivering God thru Christ to the world. It's God's gift, it's Amazing Grace.

Of course, this kind of opens up the interesting territory where you have a deified Mary among certain Catholics...

well, yes, that's how I was raised. also raised with 'those fucking catholics and their false idols like Mary and the Saints...'

esp since Jesus isn't the immaculate conception -- Mary is

Jesus was a from a virgin birth because no MAN could have been responsible for delivering God thru Christ to the world. It's God's gift, it's Amazing Grace.

i think it's more b/c people's bodies are disgusting, influence of neo-platonism, etc.

Kind of more or less a feature of every organized religion.

Kinda also the writers of the Gospels cribbing from existing regional myths where virgin/miraculous births were pretty commonplace.

"Even if you COULD just flip a switch and make those right wing authoritarians stop believing in god, you would *not* get nice, freethinking liberals. You would get a bunch of right wing authoritarian super-dogmatic ATHEISTS instead."

Authoritarians need to derive their authority from something, and if this switch were truly flipped, they'd be incapable of being effective authoritarians. I'm trying to think of the worst group that leans atheist and I came up with Libertarians, who somehow manage to be pretty authoritarian in their anti-authoritarianism, which is an amazing trick, but I suspect religion is part of how they achieve this magic.

"Personally, I can't imagine anything more mind-numbingly boring that discussing baseball"

I used to think that way, but the entire game's been changed by people who are basically nerds, and that aspect is totally fascinating. This is very promising in that maybe nerds can pull a similar upheaval within religious life. I'm not sure how sabermetrics can be introduced into theology but it's worth pursuing!

Authoritarians need to derive their authority from something, and if this switch were truly flipped, they'd be incapable of being effective authoritarians. I'm trying to think of the worst group that leans atheist and I came up with Libertarians, who somehow manage to be pretty authoritarian in their anti-authoritarianism, which is an amazing trick, but I suspect religion is part of how they achieve this magic.

lulz x100 to be found here

just fyi, a quick glance at world history and i bet you'll be able to find some super authoritarian (fascistic even) atheist/secular governments and political movements

Back to being serious for a moment, though, there's a part of me (and it might be that "faith hope and charity" leftover Xian thinking) that thinks that 40,000+ a week megachurches are a kind of "cultural what's on the radio" rather than a sign that the entire South is comprised of unchangeable Right Wing Authoritarians. That people with an agenda have managed to get hold of the cultural radio. And I don't think that the response to this is to secede and let them go hang, but more to try and promote a wider variety of radio stations, and you do that through interfaith outreach, and trying to persuade people that there are radio stations where people can hear YDS liberals and Quaker meeting houses and Tibetan Buddhist retreats - that you don't have to become a scary godless atheist, you can have a wider view of Christianity and still retain that important Christian part of your identity since that's so culturally important.

But that could just be me being a total hippie, saying repeatedly that that the answer to intolerant religion isn't no religion, but showing religiously-minded people that they can have a different *kind* of religion.

it's not just about atheism, is it though? it's about being reasonable and rational. I get the impression that sweden is a good country to live in because they're logical about things, more than anything. high levels of non-belief are part of that, but it's not the whole picture.

like, if you abolish religion, but everybody has to hero-worship giant pictures of the great leader and his corny moustache, then that's not really in the spirit of free thinking and rational enquiry.

it's not just about atheism, is it though? it's about being reasonable and rational heterogeneity.

But that could just be me being a total hippie

DING DING DING

Your assumption is that these people have a natural desire for spirituality or Christianity, and that if presented with more reasonable/liberal/etc alternatives, they'll find they can fill that void. I don't think that's the case for a majority of them.

"just fyi, a quick glance at world history and i bet you'll be able to find some super authoritarian (fascistic even) atheist/secular governments and political movements"

making the state or dictator proxy for god strikes me as being secular in name only, and often times not even that.

Philip, I don't understand what you're saying anymore. If you got rid of god, authoritarians wouldn't have anything to hang their hats on -- except leaders as proxy for god? Yes, obv. Now take the next step: Gods and leaders both fill a role for X, such that getting rid of one manifestation of X doesn't get rid of X itself.

g. k . chesterton to thread

This magical switch gets rid of X (religion). gods, man-gods, and football are manifestations of X.
BTW I agree it's impossible to flip this switch.

Like, it would require an act of God.

it's not just about atheism, is it though? it's about being reasonable and rational heterogeneity.

― Mordy, Sunday, 19 September 2010 17:51 (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

but where does the idea that heterogeneity is a good thing come from? religious texts are not exactly big on it.

sweden is not more heterogenous than the united states, btw

Also I'm not joking w/r/t sabermetrics & religion. Professional sports are practically a religion and nerds (laity) were able to change the game -- change the frequency of the cultural radio as it were. There were all sorts of myths and long-ingrained beliefs about what mattered in baseball, and the nerds were able to change that. Why can't they do the same for the church?

lol sweden is incredibly un-heterogenuous, and, well, kinda swinging rightwards

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/7278532/Jews-leave-Swedish-city-after-sharp-rise-in-anti-Semitic-hate-crimes.html

Careful there - that story kind of suggests that heterogenity is causing the problem.

There were all sorts of myths and long-ingrained beliefs about what mattered in baseball, and the nerds were able to change that.

Eh, not until things like OPS, VORP, and Win Shares work their way into the box scores, they haven't, regardless of what Theo Epstein does from the front office. As far as your average baseball fan is concerned, Runs, Hits, RBI, HR and Errors are still pretty much all that matters.

I would suggest to anyone who hasn't read The Authoritarians, to do so, because a lot of terminology is getting tossed around, and I'm using it in the way that it is outlined in that book.

"People who just listen to whatever's on the radio" are not Right Wing Authoritarians, they're just people who haven't given it a great deal of thought.

RWA's are people who have a specific type of personality whereby they do not (maybe even can not) decide things for themselves, and rely on an authority to dictate what their morals, their mores, etc. are.

The "whatever's on the radio" majority are certainly capable of changing, depending on how general culture changes around them - if you switch their radio from country to pop, they'll complain about it a bit at first, but within a week or two will go around humming Lady Gaga as unthinkingly as they hummed Shania Twain.

RWA's are the highly literal people who have a Geir-like tenacity to stick to their authorities. If these people had been raised in an atheist state, they would go around burning Christians. The only way to change these people is to change the Authority, and that is *incredibly* difficult, once it has been established. (Hence why they will continue to defend repeatedly discredited authorities like Pat Robertson and GWB.) Changing the radio station will not affect these people at all - the only way to keep them in check is to make sure that the people *running* the radio station are not manipulative, evil or politically motivated.

I do recommend reading this book, if you want to understand why the religious right wing in the states has affected the political landscape in the way it has.

Basically, lots of people, you can change them if they're convinced enough that everyone else around them has changed, too. But a hardcore minority, you cannot change them, the only thing you can do is try to keep the people who would manipulate them away from positions of power.

Obviously, I do not explain this as well as Bob Altameyer, which is why you should read the book instead of my clumsy metaphors.

As to baseball, I simply do not care about it, I do not have the sport gene built into my personality, and no amount of geekery will *ever* convince me to care about baseball, or indeed, any sport at all. Chocolate and vanilla.

didn't vote, but i'm jewish (reformed), and do believe in god.

If these people had been raised in an atheist state, they would go around burning Christians.

yah, true believer syndrome. but people do ping-pong within that context...avowed "Satanists" to fundamentalist Christianity or whatever

RWA's are the highly literal people who have a Geir-like tenacity to stick to their authorities. If these people had been raised in an atheist state, they would go around burning Christians. The only way to change these people is to change the Authority, and that is *incredibly* difficult, once it has been established. (Hence why they will continue to defend repeatedly discredited authorities like Pat Robertson and GWB.) Changing the radio station will not affect these people at all - the only way to keep them in check is to make sure that the people *running* the radio station are not manipulative, evil or politically motivated.

People who follow Pat and GWB and have a Geir-like tenacity to stick to their authorities aren't some small minority.

Mr. Nunez's aside about baseball is the most interesting thing in this thread by a longshot.

i think india does religion really well

oh, you love jesus, allah, buddha, krishna, god? okay, we'll find a slot for you.

their philosophy is mind-bogglingly sophisticated.

they have a beautiful way of reconciling the divine as both absolute and in relative forms

they take an approach to realizing God that is, well, scientific. Yoga

saying "namaste" to somebody is a joke of sorts over "here", marking you as a hippie whatever. but there it's a real thing. watch manjula's cooking videos on youtube.

"As far as your average baseball fan is concerned, Runs, Hits, RBI, HR and Errors are still pretty much all that matters."
this is the sound of my crest falling! that's a bummer!

BTW I have no idea what those stats mean. I, too, am baseball-gene deficient, but Moneyball is still totally interesting from a pure nerd insurgency perspective. My understanding is that the other teams were forced to change their practices by A's sheer dollars-to-performance ratio, in the same way casinos had to change up blackjack after card-counters started taking them for $$$.

I'm not sure how you'd be able to directly apply lessons from one to the other. There's no world series of church. But I think where you can agree on certain goals, like reducing the number of abortions, a sabermetric mindset could convert more people to the "safe,legal,rare" approach by demonstrating its effectiveness over prohibition.

People say namaste over hear all the time when they say "one love!" or point a finger upwards as a greeting or parting gesture. I think we should all greet each other with "peace" IMO.

*here

People say namaste over hear all the time when they say "one love!" or point a finger upwards as a greeting or parting gesture. I think we should all greet each other with "peace" IMO.

ugh. that would drive me bananas.

not "peace" but the other thing. so basically i am a hypocrite. love the idea of loving the unwashed or washed masses but off the internet i am rock-solid misanthrope

People who follow Pat and GWB and have a Geir-like tenacity to stick to their authorities aren't some small minority.

That ones that cannot and will not change *are* the minority. There are studies and stats behind this and good academic research.

You need to separate those 40,000+ mega-churches out into the "what's on the radio" people and the strong Right Wing Authoritarians.

Because the "radio people" - who are actually statistically the majority - you will never make deep thinkers of them. But if you surround then with tolerant, liberal thinkers instead of just RWA's then you might make a tolerant liberal out of them.

The minority of strong RWA's, you will never make thinkers of them, you will never make liberals of them, but you *can* stop them from setting the radio station for the rest of their culture.

Ah, okay, I see what you're saying.

Still, being born and raised into a culture where their biggest influence is RWA FM means that they're virtually unchangeable at this point. They might not be that hardcore group, but by God they believe that gays are an abomination and that God's will is for them to make as much money as possible.

Having taught philosophy of religion for several years now at a large public university in a red US state, I've found that my students rarely have any clear idea of what they believe re. religion, even if they're active-ish in churches. We spend lots of time trying to get clearer on such matters, but it's evident that this clarity isn't particularly important for what religion does for them in their lives, which is give them an identity & a vague sense that they live an orderly life.

I think, as an atheist, this is part of the concern though. Perhaps most religious people don't believe in 100% of their church's doctrine, but how is that a good thing? There's something even more disturbing about the idea that people are supporting these anti-science, anti-gay, anti-rational power structures just out of a sort of lazy "what's on the radio" social impulse. Sure, there are billions of individual, nuanced personal interpretations of religion but I think that has less to do with any spirit of inquiry fostered by the church and more to do with the fact that very few people actually think this shit through.

^^^ Right. These people are often -- to belabor the analogy -- hitting the "scan" button over and over looking for that particular station, and become involved as listeners as a reaction to being "surround[ed] with tolerant, liberal thinkers." They don't have to be "RWAs" to be extremely frightened of and resistant to change, and the more they are surrounded by it, the more they react and lash out against it. That's what the whole damned "Culture Wars" are.

I mean, this is basically reducing people -- actual human beings -- to, I don't know, chameleons? Lemmings? Or something? "Oh, just move them from this cage here to that one there and they'll behave entirely differently!" That seems like a million times more condescending than anything atheists have posited ITT.

lol sweden is incredibly un-heterogenuous, and, well, kinda swinging rightwards

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/sweden/7278532/Jews-leave-Swedish-city-after-sharp-rise-in-anti-Semitic-hate-crimes.html

― paying AFFECTIONATE homage to his somewhat exaggerated teeth (history mayne), Sunday, 19 September 2010 18:16

point is, it's got further right to go than the us or uk in the first place. europe as a whole is moving to the right, unfortunately.