IMO, some of the norm makes sense. Some rules in the Bible are rational, and some not. Most modern day Christian sects have eliminated (or ignore) the stuff that makes the least sense anyway. Christianity has been secularized. Some of the more controversial items are slowly going (gay rights), but I do think decades down the road that only a few congregations will hold those beliefs. At that point, the morals will be able to be justified by reason, and IMO, most atheists will agree to them. They just wonât have a God belief.
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Yeah, itâs why I was asking earlier how many Christians do people here know whom are actually REALLY pious.
Most I know just go through the motions probably because of the fear of Hell but they still abide by social rules and norms while entertaining mystical stuff like lucky numbers for the lottery or fortune telling that isnât part of Christianity,
Theyâre almost at the level of atheists to me. I donât see society crumbling yet lol.
EDIT:
I donât think Christianity will ever be fully secularized, Itâs just not possible not to have deism in a religion. Even Buddhism started off secular and eventually evolved into deism and then went further into Hinduism and Taoism. A god will always exist IMO.
EDIT:
We might see a secular branch, though. I remember @themyth was talking about some weird variation of secular Buddhism that recognizes Jesus as one of there guys or something.
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I think that is right. If we look at things that are deemed negative (divorce, crime) I donât see evidence that lack of belief drives these things.
I do think the church (some not all) has done a lot of messaging about atheists and negative outcomes which I think is unfounded. I think there are strong parallels to the gop and socialism (saying voting Dem is a path to socialism, and negative outcomes).
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Man, you had to bring this up lol.
Iâm gonna ruffle a few feathers here, but I agree and will go further and state my opinion that religious people tend to gravitate towards subservience to hierarchies and strong leaders with absolute power. You can easily see this in Muslim nations. The West at least had the Enlightenment era while others like the Chinese didnât so we still accept âemperorsâ like Xi Jinping.
So theyâre naturally against the more egalitarian interpretations of socialism since thereâs an inevitable belief in Exceptionalism(not that it doesnât exist, just that this idea is taken way too far) to justify the forming of, and conforming to strict hierarchies.
Flame suit on.
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Secularism is a Christian concept, born out of necessity when Franks, Goths, Vandals and other assorted âbarbarianâ tribes started conquering and settling parts of the Roman Empire.
Roman elites has most of their wealth tied in landed estates and for obvious reasons could flee with it when the invaders came, so they came up on the spot with the whole concept of dividing the world into âsecularâ and âspiritualâ spheres as not to be murdered outright by annoyed Visigoth chieftains.
So sons of distinguished Roman families became not only consuls but bishops which enabled them to keep most of their wealth through the Church without disturbing the new bosses in town.
This necessity of separating religion from worldly power is conspicuously missing from other religions. Itâs Christianity thatâs the outlier, not the other way around.
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Is that what secularism means? I thought it was simply a rejection of deism. Got any links for further reading? Really interested in this topic. Thanks.
Ah, ok I looked up the meaning of the word and itâs a seperation of Church and State.
I got it confused with âsecular Buddhismâ, which is a rejection of deism.
Tom Holland (the historian, not Spiderman) wrote about this extensively - how Westerners tried to pigeonhole political systems found elsewhere into âreligionsâ, yet it is only them that recognize this concept.
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Well Islam does translate to âThe submission to the will of Godâ
So makes sense haha.
Iâve shared many times now how my new found appreciation for Christianity developed after watching many Jordan Peterson videos.
I try to have conversations with my born again sister on religion. I was trying to tell her that Christianity has a lot to offer and not necessarily to do with the supernatural component.
What it says about humans. Archetypes. What does it mean that many of stories in the bible likely predate the written word yet persisted over time.
But she is really hung up on the notion that Jesus died for our sins and you must accept him as your lord and saviour.
Thats all fine and dandy but people like her are a dying breed. Atheists grow in number every day and those beliefs are incredibly off putting to them. If they want to keep their religion around they need adapt and cultivate an appreciation that isnât dependent on subservience as you mention.
Iâve seen your posts for years and always been impressed at how much history you know.
Is that just an interest or are you formally educated on the subject?
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Nope, Iâm an engineer, although I wanted to study history all my life. I didnât want to end up as a broke high school teacher, so I chose a more lucrative profession. But to this day I devour historical books on a weekly basis.
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This I think matches Peterson pretty well. FWIW, I donât think he is a Christian unless we use his definition of Christianity (which would include several / most prominent atheists as Christians).
What Iâm afraid of is the younger generation where I live being attracted to the loony kind of evangelist churches which have fancy venues, live Christian rock bands and relatively young, hip and charismatic pastors.
These have been growing steadily over the years in Asia. At least China is clamping down on them, though I donât agree with it. And, ironically, South Koreaâs entire COVID problem was due to one of these churches who were very secretive about close contacts so they couldnât do proper contact tracing initially.
Then they did stupid shit like this:
Theyâre like cults and make people pay up to 30% of their salaries to the Church while maintaining tax free status and arenât required to undergo auditing.
They used the some of their misappropriated cash to make this fucking video LOL:
You just canât make this shit up.
Iâd choose an atheistic society over something like this any day.
IMO, this is why they are not going to go (or at least I think they try to avoid as long as possible) to this:
It is really hard to get people to part with 10% of their income (the standard ask from churches in the USA) if they are just participating for tradition and a sense of community with social norms. I think for most people, that they really need to believe to hand over big sums of money.
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So even my retorts are predetermined, meaning you cannot do anything about it as itâs determined. Engaging in the act of convincing is an invocation of freewill, even if you believe that itâs determined, so you are at best left with a paradox.
However, the idea of illusory freewill, could be in fact an illusion of determinism. The illusory component goes both ways.
The only legitimate argument for determinism, in order for me to believe you actually believe in determinism requires no argumentation at all. Itâs the only way to go about believing in determinism without invoking freewill to make an argument.
Since belief in true determinism demands you cannot invoke the implication of freewill, then you cannot make an argument for it. If you cannot make an argument for it, itâs logically impossible. Therefore, not determinism.
I.E. you cannot temporarily suspend your belief in determinism in order to make an argument for it, because the argument for it assumes a person or sentient being has a choice as to whether or not to believe it, provided he has enough information. Total commitment to determinism would require you to deny any ability of the will to change an outcome.
Or you can be under the illusion itâs determined.
It does indeed match Petersonâs beliefs.
His definition of Christianity? There are several definitions out there and I would argue he isnât the original author of what he considers his belief to be. It is actually not even that original of an idea at its core.
To the fundamentalist type he would not be a Christian.
It is interesting you mentioned that. When I was looking at data I found that Christianity was fastest growing in certain areas of Asia.
South Korea for example. 1950s 1 % Catholic. 2015 8 %. 1950 3 % protestant 2015 20 %.
Thats a pretty big jump in 55 years.
I am not a philosophy buff. And I donât have much time right now.
But that doesnât make sense.
You cannot say the nature of the universe is deterministic?
Why?
Because it invokes âfreewillâ?
What?
How does that make any sense.
I read this.
So people arguing for determinism, by assuming they have a choice to believe or not believe, automatically debunks determinism.
That also doesnât make sense.
How about they just think there is a choice.
We are all a collection of very tiny parts.
When you look at the small parts. They behave in predictable ways. If you went to the start of the universe and could see every tiny part at the same time and you had knowledge of their characteristics. You could predict the entirety of events in the universe.
Obviously, the mystery of subatomic particles has not been entirely elucidated. But I have âfaithâ haha, that one day they will be.
Perhaps there is something that is entirely unpredictable. But given our observations. And the track record for establishing predicability once weâve collected enough data I think that wonât be the case.
Under determinism your mind may change, but itâs through no action of your own. The key word is choose to change your mind. I misspoke when I said âminds cannot be changedâ. Under determinism, you could start thinking you are a pink elephant itâs just not going to be do to a willful act of encouragement or discouragement. It just is, everything just is. There is no good or bad. There is no evil or right, there is just stuff and actions. One no better or worse than another. All your feelings are meaningless.
Thatâs a freewill argument. Circumstance is just more stuff under determinism. Determinism means no choice whatsoever, choice doesnât exist. The mere appearance of choice shouldnât really be possible even as an illusion. You cannot even choose to believe you have no choice.
It debunks the notion they believe in determinism. There is no way to make an argument for it without believing the argument is convincing and not invoking freewill to do it. To make the argument, you have to suspend belief in determinism to make it, which is an inherent contradiction.
One could argue that the argument was itself determined, but then you start down the path of infinite regress, because you cannot make the argument that the argument was determined with out invoking freewill. And then, you can make the argumenet that the argument for the argument of determinism was itself determined, but you still cannot make that argument without invoking freewill. And that cycle continues infinitely.
Sounds good to me.
Life doesnât seem to follow the rules of the universe very well. Could you predict from the early events of the universe that someone would invoke freewill to make an argument for determinism and defend it by invoking freewill to defend the argument for determinism? Or the dream I had last night? Or the feeling of love?
Perhaps you could predict the possibility of life existing from the early universe, but you couldnât predict what that life will do in itâs closed system, on a personal level from the early universe.
The problem with the universe is that as much as we do know about it, we really donât know much of shit about it. We know very little given the potential of what is knowable.
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Then you shouldnât have asked the questions below, because they dig deep into the ether.
I can. I am not bound by determinism. I have happily marry freewill with ultimately deterministic systems. Advocating for freewill, I have the choice. True determinism is purely reactive. Meaning there is only cause and effect, no choice. A tiny margin of the universe having freewill in a closed system would not affect the outcome of the universe. Ultimately, this will just be another hot rock in space, regardless of what we do here.
I donât have faith that we can become an interplanetary species and even if we did, it wouldnât affect the outcome of the cold death of the universe. It would merely by us time.
You are not really make a case for free will here.
I guess we need to go step by step.
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Do you think the universe is made up of fundamental tiny parts?
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Do you accept that for many of these parts we understand their characteristics sufficiently that we can predict how they interact with other parts.
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Do you accept that we as sentient beings are made up of these fundamental tiny parts.
I am just curious for your answer to those three questions before we go further. I wonât respond for a bit though.