are you an atheist?

being wrong about how humans behave and how societies work vs. being wrong about how the universe works
xp

it's really only a relatively recent that "religion" constitutes a differentiated social system

Huh? You can argue that several hundred years ago, pretty much everyone expected religion to be as decisive a force in public behavior as politics and many actively encouraged it but ppl certainly knew about disbelievers and heretics and other religions and days other than the Sabbath and pastimes more entertaining than worship.

wk - if you have a broad enough understanding of "metaphysical claims" then you could argue they do. but you dont need to go that far. you'd simply say that those ideologies are only capable of "observing" after their own distinctions. they remain blind to other factors. economics isn't able to identify the non-economic causes of phenomena.

post-Mao PRC seems to be Dengist "get rich" capitalism, but you don't feel that's religious-y either. Aren't there still Maoist rebels around, though?

there's an intrinsically metaphysical component to capitalism. "money -- how does it work?" instead of magnets

If you're calling for the elimination of Mormonism I don't think there's a term you can use that will make Mormons okay with it. So maybe stick to the term that makes intellectual sense and not the one you have a hard-on for? xp

who are you talking to??

I don't think money is metaphysical. It's just a convenience so you don't have to take cowrie shells or your cattle down to the gas station.

Granny, I've been fasting for 23 hours now so I may be feeling more testy than normal. I was speaking to Philip who bumped this thread to argue that Maoism + Capitalism are religions like Mormonism and Judaism are religions. (Incidentally an argument that would indicate that religion has grown exponentially and not dwindled at all.) I have continually tried to argue that the very term 'religion' is a problematic inheritance from Hume that obscures more than it illuminates. It was an attempt to compare a variety of unrelated phenomena (such as Buddhism and Calvinism). In that sense, Philip is using the term correctly - by trying to compare things that have nothing in common besides his feeling that they are similarly destructive.

"in pretty much every case the goal was simply to consolidate power in a single set of hands."
I don't necessarily agree this was the case with Mao (because frankly he seemed a little nuts),
but why don't you allow this to be a valid religious ideology?

also, money is faith! it's one of the few examples of literal magic.

mordy, totally agree with your posts about needinga diff term. Go eat something!

hour and a half to go. i've got bagels, lox, cream cheese + white fish in the fridge.

there's an intrinsically metaphysical component to capitalism. "money -- how does it work?" instead of magnets

The answer to that is to come up with some sort of theory of how money might work and test it out. Communism and capitalism are at least somewhat like scientific experiments compared to metaphysics.

from what i've read about the fed reserve, there's nothing at all scientific, and very much faith and shrugging of shoulders about what they're doing.

id argue that's because economics per se is responding to a complex "environment" (ie,non-economic factors, things that aren't "money") that it literally can't "see."

religion is especially interesting in this contest because maybe more than any other discourse it's basically obsessed with what it can't see and has tools (ie, negative theology for one) for exposing that fact.

*context

(which is why you get someone like Derrida giving negative theology a tip of the hat, even if he wants to ultimately distinguish what he's doing from it.)

inexact science is still a science. meteorology vs groundhog seeing its shadow

in some sense i feel like the strain of conservativism that wants to go back to the gold standard wants this faith renewed into a biblically approved metal rather than in the state, in the same way they want charity/alms to be private rather than public -- a power struggle for faith mana.

i dont exactly disagree granny--im simply arguing on behalf of things that aren't exact or inexact sciences.

i thought i was backing up your point about responding to a complex environment

i dunno dudes, economics lookin a lot like eschatology for like, the past few decades...

they involve forcible re-education, penalties for teaching religion to children, etc.

The english tried that in Ireland with the Penal Laws. The irish catholics just went underground with the hedge schools. And ironically, the greatest success the english had was in solidly uniting irish nationalism with irish catholicism so that the church was greatly strengthened by alliance with a powerful secular movement.

I should have used the term supernatural rather than metaphysical. Economics involves some highly abstract concepts, but even the most arcane wall street paper-pushing shenanigans are ultimately tied to the physical at some level (real estate, oil, etc).

And is there such a thing as an economic agnostic? Somebody who claims that the way markets work is fundamentally unknowable?

throw your hand in the ay-er
if you eschew prayer

― fman29.5 (k3vin k.), Monday, June 7, 2010 11:53 AM (2 years ago)

this was a good post

isn't economics called "dismal science" because of its lack of verifiability? anyway in a foxhole we're all keynesians.

And is there such a thing as an economic agnostic? Somebody who claims that the way markets work is fundamentally unknowable?

― wk, Wednesday, September 26, 2012 7:18 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Market goes up, market goes down- you can't explain that!

this is a really good read (i'm interested in checking out his new book too): http://www.salon.com/2013/01/13/jared_diamond_its_irrational_to_be_religious/

The writer is making a pretty big assumption that the entire content of spiritual writings seems to be in a literal, historical, non-metaphorical readings, which is a terrible interpretation. In addition to this gross oversimplification, there are a few more things i take issue with:

No other feature of religion creates a bigger divide between religious believers and modern secular people, to whom it staggers the imagination that anyone could entertain such beliefs. No other feature creates a bigger divide between believers in two different religions, each of whom firmly believes its own beliefs but considers it absurd that the other religion’s believers believe those other beliefs.

Supernatural beliefs are bad because they divide people. Inversely, modern secularists are above such illogical divisiveness. Yet the author polarizes all possible shades of spirituality into either antiquated dogmatic religious literalists or modern secular people. There is some level of hypocrisy here, though taking into account the author's logical desire to sell books to the neo atheist market, it does make sense.

I do agree that the sort of Old World Creationist this article is criticizing is ridiculous. But to use that as a general example for all religious experience is a simple and easy way to go about making your argument.

He could do with toning down the condescension too. But that may make it difficult to market his book to the desired demographic.

maybe new world creationists should do more to separate themselves from the old world ones, if being lumped in together is such a problem, idk

Not really feasible as I have known both to exist within the same congregations/denominations, and the distinction cuts across a plethora of beliefs.

It only becomes a problem when writers oversimplify the scope of religious belief in order to make broad, clumsy statements like the one quoted above.

The title of that piece is really really dumb. Was anyone really arguing that religion is a rational thing today? Or are religious people more likely saying 'yeah, but rationality will only get you so far'? And then, the article concludes: 'Thus, religious supernatural beliefs are irrational, but emotionally plausible and satisfying.' Yep, because being emotionally satisfied is a totally irrational thing to choose to be...

The ex-communicated minister episode of "this american life" makes a similar point though, not that TAL doesn't also sometimes oversimplify, but there's something to it, and if it in any way counters the idea that you can bring people of clashing faiths into accord by simply defeating them in an argument, then it's a net positive.

you have to defeat them in a race war

Um, reading what I wrote, perhaps they are not more likely saying that, but... some people are saying that.

what I found interesting was the idea that it is specifically the irrationality of the belief that makes it constitutive; you signal belonging by saying some crazy shit no one could possibly believe

literary cfuck rules

it's interesting to me that articles like that never mention, say, William James. Not that James is foundational but he signals a particular way of taking religion on its own terms. what happens too often (particularly of the Dawkins/Hitchens school) is that we are just fighting the same old battles of secularization and modernity over and over again. maybe that's necessary but it's also boring and not a little obtuse.

Mordy i like that idea too, particularly if you're willing to reject the idea of rationality as totalizing (ie, as simply a replacement for the pre-modern role of religion).

I think it's more being high stakes than irrationality, but it's easier to access high stakes through irrationality? Like global warming deniers aren't necessarily resorting to irrational arguments off the bat.

Pointing out that people believe something or socially proclaim something because it gives them an emotional gratification is sort of duh. There are plenty of things we do - rational and otherwise - that have that appeal and don't have roots in religion. Pointing it out specifically in this case just seems like a dog whistle for neo atheists.

Well it's not kind of "duh" if people are still stockpiling appeals to rationalism as antidote, and atheists of the dawkinsy-evangelical bent especially ought to absorb that point.

Also, the fact that it's obvious (or 'duh') doesn't constitute an argument against it. That amounts to discounting an argument because it's obviously true, which is a rather odd point of view. Lots of theories are intuitively obvious, and that doesn't mean, by itself, that we should dismiss them.

Moreover, while many people have an emotional connection to certain true beliefs, it is non-emotional facts that make that belief true. So, for example, the fact that the earth is round may make me feel warm and fuzzy. The illusory belief that I am a member of the master race may also make me feel warm and fuzzy. The fact that both beliefs are, in my belief system, entirely emotionally founded does not mean that an understanding of how this process works is irrelevant to understanding how delusion is created. On the contrary, it's extremely important that we understand this process.

'Thus, religious supernatural beliefs are irrational, but emotionally plausible and satisfying.' Yep, because being emotionally satisfied is a totally irrational thing to choose to be...

― Frederik B, Monday, January 14, 2013 3:05 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

So all delusions are rational as long as they make you feel good?

more like: it may be rational to hold irrational beliefs. tho how one can choose whether or not to hold a belief i'm not sure.

I must be an atheist. I think I had a level of agnosticism, possibly something close to faith all the way up into my early 20s, but now I find the whole subject of religion a bit icky, like talking about the existence of Father Christmas with grown adults might.

got no truck with militant atheists though - that's the most hypocritical bullshit. i'd like to read some of Dawkins's philosophical/sciencey stuff because it sounds interesting, but his fanatical agenda completely puts me off.

Dawkins doesn't do philosophical stuff. He's good on evolutionary biology tho.

yeah, i'd say read anything he did up til ooooh say '87 not sure how much he's repeating himself after that tbh

That Diamond thing reads like someone who understands very little about the psychology of religious belief or of group dynamics in a religious community. I find the idea that believers spout irrational claims as a sort of badge of identity to be preposterous. For one thing, "rationality" is a lot more ambiguous and complex than Diamond gives it credit for. For another, I think the core beliefs of most believers are things that make sense to them on a deep level, and not necessarily without justification. The elements of their tradition that most strain credulity are usually the ones they privately struggle with, and not the ones they tend to focus on.

Or, to quote William James:

The opinion opposed to mysticism in philosophy is sometimes spoken of as rationalism. Rationalism insists that all our beliefs ought ultimately to find for themselves articulate grounds. Such grounds, for rationalism, must consist of four things: (1) definitely statable abstract principles; (2) definite facts of sensation; (3) definite hypotheses based on such facts; and (4) definite inferences logically drawn. Vague impressions of something indefinable have no place in the rationalistic system, which on its positive side is surely a splendid intellectual tendency, for not only are all our philosophies fruits of it, but physical science (amongst other good things) is its result.

Nevertheless, if we look on man's whole mental life as it exists, on the life of men that lies in them apart from their learning and science, and that they inwardly and privately follow, we have to confess that the part of it of which rationalism can give an account is relatively superficial. It is the part that has the prestige undoubtedly, for it has the loquacity, it can challenge you for proofs, and chop logic, and put you down with words. But it will fail to convince or convert you all the same, if your dumb intuitions are opposed to its conclusions. If you have intuitions at all, they come from a deeper level of your nature than the loquacious level which rationalism inhabits. Your whole subconscious life, your impulses, your faiths, your needs, your divinations, have prepared the premises, of which your consciousness now feels the weight of the result; and something in you absolutely knows that that result must be truer than any logic-chopping rationalistic talk, however clever, that may contradict it. This inferiority of the rationalistic level in founding belief is just as manifest when rationalism argues for religion as when it argues against it. That vast literature of proofs of God's existence drawn from the order of nature, which a century ago seemed so overwhelmingly convincing, to-day does little more than gather dust in libraries, for the simple reason that our generation has ceased to believe in the kind of God it argued for. Whatever sort of a being God may be, we know to-day that he is nevermore that mere external inventor of "contrivances" intended to make manifest his "glory" in which our great-grandfathers took such satisfaction, though just how we know this we cannot possibly make clear by words either to others or to ourselves. I defy any of you here fully to account for your persuasion that if a God exist he must be a more cosmic and tragic personage than that Being.

The truth is that in the metaphysical and religious sphere, articulate reasons are cogent for us only when our inarticulate feelings of reality have already been impressed in favor of the same conclusion. Then, indeed, our intuitions and our reason work together, and great world-ruling systems, like that of the Buddhist or of the Catholic philosophy, may grow up. Our impulsive belief is here always what sets up the original body of truth, and our articulately verbalized philosophy is but its showy translation into formulas. The unreasoned and immediate assurance is the deep thing in us, the reasoned argument is but a surface exhibition. Instinct leads, intelligence does but follow. If a person feels the presence of a living God after the fashion shown by my quotations, your critical arguments, be they never so superior, will vainly set themselves to change his faith.

we don't have to confess any such thing, paragraph two