are you an atheist?

"maoism had no ideology beyond absolute fealty to Mao. this is quite different."
1. absolute fealty strikes me as about as pure an ideology as you could get but
2. purges and great leap forwards and treatises on dialectics don't strike you as pointing to some grander ideology at work?

i'm not sure there's any trend towards the world being less religious

there is

I cut down on smiting the infidels; only six dead this week.

i love when I get into arguments on ILE where people object to facts that have been verified by like a billion studies/stats

Or when we say less religious, do you mean the percentage of ppl that self-identify as religious? Or that actually follow their faith's theology and tenets?

Our society is certainly laxer and more tolerant than it was a hundred years ago.

"'Religion' is just a construct used since the Enlightenment to compare things that are as dissimilar as they are similar. It's such a silly argument to have."
I think it's critical to distinguish between harmful movements and non-harmful ones, and if religion is the closest word we have available, I don't think it's unreasonable to use, though I'd welcome less divisive alternatives.

http://www.google.com/search?q=people+less+religious+now&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-us&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1&rlz=1I7ADFA_enUS468&oq=people+less+re&gs_l=heirloom-serp.3.1.0j0i30l3j0i5l6.4953.8734.0.10656.18.11.2.2.2.0.266.1469.3j6j2.11.0...0.0...1c.1.D3KHUc4GRz0

I have a less divisive alternative! "Harmful movements."

Now there might be confusion between that and painful bowel movement but if you clarify I think people will understand.

Religion' is just a construct used since the Enlightenment to compare things that are as dissimilar as they are similar.

i think this point cannot be emphasized enough. it's really only a relatively recent that "religion" constitutes a differentiated social system a la art, politics, etc. one might call this "modernity"! that is, a certain pluralism that isn't going anywhere any time soon.

2. purges and great leap forwards and treatises on dialectics don't strike you as pointing to some grander ideology at work?

I've read a fair bit about mao, in pretty much every case the goal was simply to consolidate power in a single set of hands. like Stalin, Mao just used the handiest ideological tools available at the time. This has pretty much continued post-Mao as well fwiw (does anyone honestly think there's anything at all Marxist/Communist about the PRC? Sole goal is the concentration and persistence of power).

xp

in the abstract it's less divisive, but i feel like calling Mormonism a "harmful movement" would get some hackles raised all the same.

Political and economic ideologies don't tend to make the metaphysical claims that religions all make, do they?

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

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