Its not really a dismissal of faith, just a description of its function. Without it, people die.
Unless your understanding of the world includes understanding of supernatural beings. Then all bets are off.
My personal position is one of skeptical faith. In what? I have no idea. If I did, it wouldn’t be faith.
But after the life I’ve lived, its hard not to believe in something. But thats not really faith. Thats facts. Smarter people than me have said “there must be a reason you’re here.”. I just take for granted that they’re probably right. So, What is that reason? ← thats faith. Cuz I have no idea, yet I persist.
I feel like this is something unique to texans, especially in this area. We dont really FEEL politics as hard as everyone else. It is a lot more about watching from afar the shit show that other states are participating in.
The endless cycle of presidential candidates from two parties of none is really baffling to me, and I usually only feel solace in the change in economy when a liberal run is ended.
I dont know what is happening lately, but while I dont think society is becoming smarter, I do believe the swing in attitude is not to toe the line as former generations did. And for better or worse, I believe the back and forth charade will end soon.
Agreed. Or there would be no order and chaos would ensue, so a homogenous belief system keeps everybody on the same page, or at least creates a core of “how it should be”.
I see correlation vs causation in your first paragraph. If anything using religion in general to justify society proves there is more than one path.
I’m not sure there has ever been a legitimate chance to form an atheistic society. We are just now at a point of scientific understanding to broadly doubt much of the supernatural. Not so many generations ago, Covid-19 would’ve been viewed as a plague by an angry god and we would be performing whichever prayers and spiritual cleansing rituals our religion or sect prescribed to address it.
What I believe Skyzyks is alluding to in part is a need for agreement on a core set of beliefs to base societal rules and outcomes on. And religions do provide this, they are useful inventions no doubt, but it doesn’t mean literal good and evil supreme and near supreme beings exist. There is no real evidence they do. Just very old, very incredible stories accepted as literal truth through an openly stated act of faith. This doesn’t actually legitimize anything.
I genuinely have no idea what point you are making and I think you’ve got a straw man argument going.
My original comment to you was a simple question, “Would it be better for Christian’s to lead by example instead of “try” to convert [by other means]”.
@RT_Nomad actually summarized my position, but you’re here saying that it’s hateful for a father to tell their child to not drink bleach.
Our brains are like a supercomputer of process controls, input mechanisms, and information processing.
Our conscious minds are the operating system or user interface.
Check inside your brain for time awareness or passage. You won’t find anything. But our minds are completely aware of it, because its an abstract human construct that we use for almost everything we do.
So, in my opinion, the conscious mind is an adaptation- a product of brain function, which we then use to create the world we need to sustain life and fulfill biological imperatives.
To do that we create abstract functions of group behaviors, like unifying belief in something we can’t explain, time outside of the physical process of motion, value of objects, lots of other bullshit.
On the other hand, a deer doesn’t know its functioning within a web of natural processes. Its just eating my tomatoes.
Intentional or not, it’s easy to spot the religious apologist angle. It always starts with a broad question designed to walk down a semantically narrowing path to a pre-determined solution, or answer. In sales this is called a mouse trap. And it’s not unlike a used car lot experience in many religious discussions.
You’re asking me broad questions. I’m asking, in good faith, for context and a basis of conversation.
I think the dichotomy is between thoughtful and non-thoughtful people, with religion being secondary. I believe that a group of thoughtful atheists could, alone or in combination with religious people, build a beautifully functional society. Same thing with the religious. Unfortunately, thoughtful people are not the majority of either group (religious or non-religious) and so problems arise.
In Atlas Shrugged Rand offers that a society of and by the “producers” will thrive, but I disagree. We need dreamers and artists and consumers. I think a society of thoughtful - intelligent, reflective, considerate - people would be the key. But of course most people aren’t thoughtful; they’re reactive and easily manipulated.
And that, my friends, is why there’s so much suck in the world.
But I do deeply believe in the US, and resent the manipulation of our weak by people whose agenda has nothing to do with the (thoughtful) ideals on which we’re founded.
I’m not using religion to justify society. I’m just pointing out that I’d much rather live in a Christian one, and nearly every atheist and non-Christian on the planet has seemed to agree for at least the last several hundred years.
Many Greek, Roman and Enlightenment thinkers would disagree with this. Most communists and totally-not-communist “democratic socialists” openly advocate for the continued diminishment of religion in our society, and have for over 100 years now. What fruit has that borne?
Here in Maine we’ve thrown our lot in with that same “well, akshually” and “studies say” crowd, who consistently insist that their public policies are informed by observations of reality, unlike those backwards Christians they want to save us all from.
Meanwhile, our institutions are crumbling and we’re teaching boys that they can become girls, and vice versa, all while following the demonstrated folly of postmodernist thinking into one public policy disaster after another.
It is, after all, quite easy to believe you know more about the world around us than those easily-fooled suckers who follow the teachings of bronze age goat herders.