Is everything a religion?

[Elok]

He said "Kid ****fest." You can't tell me this isn't going to turn into a Kid ****fest.

[Berzerker]

he said

Also for the love of god if this thread somehow becomes about Trump/feminism/who-am-I-kidding-I-mean-Kid-****fest-stuff

so we cant even talk religion in a religion thread?

[Lorizael]

WRT what this guy says, religion is at the heart of culture. Anything you say about the way things are or ought to be is going to be rooted in absolute, fundamental assumptions. Those assumptions can't be rooted in anything scientific, because science has to assume a mechanistic universe--let's not get into quantum indeterminate tachyon relativistic virtual plasma stuff here, you know what I mean. Our popular understanding of nature is still basically a massive clock that's been running forever, or close enough to forever as to make no difference. In order to say anything "should" be any particular way, you have to make unfounded assumptions about this clock, or parts of it, serving some unverifiable purpose. You might say that conscious and explicit assumptions are religious. The typical hard-secular worldview seems to more or less ignore the question while treating normative claims as axiomatic, which I can't respect. Our values are Christian leftovers that forgot their beginnings and were naively assumed to be objective truths by virtue of their age and commonness within our culture.

I think there are a lot of secular philosophers who would quite readily accept that they operate according to a set of axioms that are by nature unprovable. Those that go in for math-like rigor might insist that their axioms be consistent, but that's about as much as you can guarantee. And yet I don't think we're necessarily justified in calling such philosophies religious, if only for the fact that they look different from surface level inspection. Most of the weird ass normative systems derived by ethicists don't have anything in the way of adherents, rituals, holidays, etc. because they often amount to little more than intellectual puzzles for philosophers. Theology has its own set of experts who do navel-gazing, but it's always attached to something that resembles a religion. Not all secular philosophy is.

Additionally, while it may be true that there are some philosophies of science that subscribe to a very specific mechanistic or materialistic view of the world, this is (a) not true of all philosophy of science and (b) not true of all scientists. Most scientists tend not to have very strong opinions about philosophy of science and are basically just people who do science. It is a career, and often even a passion, but the passion is for learning about the natural world or being the first to discover something rather than being passionate about the tenets of scientism.

Toward the former point, a lot of philosophical work today does not start with some core set of assumptions and then build an entire worldview out of that. Rather, work today takes an attitude of... okay, this is the world we are presented with, here are the concepts people use to navigate this world, here are the basic facts I've observed... now how do we make sense of all that. And because we live in a world where science has become central to human activity, philosophers of science tend not to (anymore) take the attitude of establishing a priori what science is or how science would have to work. Rather, philosophers see that science seems to work (has a "special epistemic status") and then try to figure out why that is. Sometimes philosophers conclude that this requires something in the way of at least methodological naturalism, other times they don't. On the far end, you have philosophers like Paul Feyerabend who insist that there is no method in the madness of science.

All of this is getting at the fact that it can be something of a universally held strawman that there is a scientific worldview that rests on materialism. Yes, some scientists, when pushed, will talk about this. And yes, some philosophers of science argue for it. But on the whole it is not necessary and it's not at all clear to me that the scientific enterprise as it really exists is organized around a particular set of assumptions. Which is not to say that there is not a culture of science that has an elaborate set of rules and myths and customs.

WRT transhumanism, I'm far from the first person to note that nerds talk about "the singularity" in essentially the same way fundies talk about "the rapture." Horrifying, world-ending, treated as inevitable, highly exciting, and completely unproveable outside the small culture of true believers.

The futurists I associate with tend to treat the singularity as something to take seriously as an idea rather than dismiss out of hand. While there are fundies who believe in a "rapture for nerds," most discussion I see is just centered around including the singularity in our thoughts about the future. It's a possibility. Let's think about it. Think about what scenarios are more likely. Think about what we could do to influence. But let's also think about a whole host of other possibilities for the future as well, because, you know, it's an undiscovered country.

[Proteus_MST]

You continue to insist on this despite the fact that Jesus clearly taught that correct belief made one a Christian, not correct behavior. Do you have any evidence that Jesus taught as you believe that he did?

Guess we'll always disaggree here.
Christians still had a 2 classes society as they still required converts with jewish bbackground, to have a circumcision ... wouldn't be necessary under the assumption that you just have to believe in him. And, if Rabbi Yeshua in his lifetime actually had said that (all) people don't need a circumcision anymore, that would have been recorded in the bible, considering the fact that this would have been a very important teaching for the jews he preached to.

The tax code certainly incentivizes everything being a religion.

The lines between cult, religion, and culture are mostly drawn based on what you want to uplift or demean.

It is quite interesting where the US courts draw the line.
Pastafarianism (the belief in the flying Spaghetti Monster) for example is regarded as "real" religion (with tax exemption) in the Netherlands and New Zeeland (that also means that "pastafarian preachers" have the right to wed people here)
In the USA however a court ruled that Pastafarianism isn't a real religion but rathr a parody of religions.

Scientology, on the other hand, is regarded as a real religion in the USA.
And that despite the fact that the "religous background" for scientology is a SciFi story of a well known SciFi author, which only people with faar too much fantasy could take for real (or people who were influenced by a certain degree of brinwashing)


Regarding Transhumanism:
I don't see any elements of a reigion here. Only a philosophical/ethical standpoint (i.e. that the generous use of science/technology in order to modify/enhance our bodily/mental capabilities is justified in order to be better prepared to cope with the challenges of the future).

(I for my part would see myself also as some kind of moderate transhumanist ... i.e. I see a certain degree of body enhancement (via drugs or even implants) as a positive thing (and would undergo such a thing if it is "safe") but also see the dangers (of creating a 2 class society, where people wouldn't be hired anymore if they don't agree to a certain degree of body modification or drug use))

[ZEE]

This is great, you guise. Fantastic.

But it needs moar Kidicious poasts, so he can PWN soem ass and educate the masses.

[Kidlicious]

Guess we'll always disaggree here.
Christians still had a 2 classes society as they still required converts with jewish bbackground, to have a circumcision ... wouldn't be necessary under the assumption that you just have to believe in him. And, if Rabbi Yeshua in his lifetime actually had said that (all) people don't need a circumcision anymore, that would have been recorded in the bible, considering the fact that this would have been a very important teaching for the jews he preached to.

I don't think that you've thought this through. Jews were already circumcised, like Jesus. There is no issue about them getting circumcised. The problem was some jews didn't understand his teaching and other Jews wanted it to be difficult for gentiles to convert because they were proud.

To say that Jesus taught that gentiles should get circumcised is ridiculous. He converted many gentiles while physically walking the earth and never told them to get circumcised. He told them that their faith had set them free and to repent.

[Kidlicious]

Elok is a little intolerant and judgemental for a Christian. Even most non-believers on this sight are more tolerant than he is.

[Elok]

Lori, I wasn't arguing that science is a religion, rather that it is basically the only common "value" all Americans share, in spite of being intrinsically neutral WRT morals. Even hardcore creationists will often attempt to arrange their beliefs into a science-y format, because they've learned that's a language Americans respect. Likewise all those stupid clickbaits people post on FB along the lines of "Science says we could be immortal in the future" or "science says marijuana cures all cancers."

Proteus, Scientology actually has a well-developed set of doctrines and practices; it's basically a modern form of Gnosticism with some technobabble, dressed up to resemble a self-help method. The famous Xenu "Wall of Fire" incident is part of OT III, a level most Scientologists never reach, and it's a one-off thing that the higher levels never refer to again once they've cleared it. So it's not the basis of the religion so much as a weird minor aspect of it (like the part about being descended from clams via Piltdown Man). Scientology is horrid, but people legitimately believe in it, and it makes a number of claims about the fundamental nature of the universe and humanity's place in it, so I'd say it counts as a religion. The strongest argument against it on that front, IMO, would be that it started out as explicitly non-religious (a "science") and only rebranded to dodge the FDA and the IRS.

[Elok]

so we cant even talk religion in a religion thread?

Sure you can--with someone who's not Kid! Arguing with Kid is pointless--he's sick in the head and will always respond with non sequiturs--and clutters the thread with people dogpiling on the stupid crap he says rather than attending to the original point of the thread. Any thread in which Kid participates will inevitably become a thread about Kid and his bizarre set of beliefs. People who actually stop to think about the things they are saying can't compete with his steady stream of whatever rubbish comes into his head, and the allure of laughing at a nutjob always draws a half-dozen people or so to type quick, easy rejoinders. This is well-attested by literally dozens of past examples.

[Kidlicious]

Elok is a special snowflake. Don't argue with him.

[Lorizael]

Will respond more later, but actually at my brother's wedding this weekend and probably picked a very poor time to start a discussion thread.

[Kidlicious]

Scientology, on the other hand, is regarded as a real religion in the USA.
And that despite the fact that the "religous background" for scientology is a SciFi story of a well known SciFi author, which only people with faar too much fantasy could take for real (or people who were influenced by a certain degree of brinwashing)]

-Proteus

According to the Koran, Allah doesn't understand the Trinity. What do you say about Islam?

[Dinner]

Meh, bring on the asteroid.

[Broken_Erika]

The most widespread religion on the planet is the church of the almighty dollar. Followed closely by soccer/football.

[BeBMan]

Re OP I'd say ppl can be pretty religious about lotsa things, but not everything is a religion.

That being said there are scholars who describe ideologies (for example communism or fascism) as political religions, and also those who say that (traditional) religions are functionally just ideologies.

Aside from that personally I'm not a fan of "religionizing" everything the article mentions (from "the market" or "Apple" to whatnot). Likewise in his medicine example "smoking" isn't really a religious taboo or alternative medicine "heretics", that is purely narrative IMO.

Modern society requires ppl to trust (so basically: to believe) in abstract systems (like: you believe/assume the Doc you visit knows *always* what he's doing not because you have been able to verfiy that, but because he's a Doc - which you furthermore assume to be true, but he *could* certainly be one of those rare/criminal examples who just lied about being a Doc). But these are IMO not religious beliefs, they are in generally reasonable assumptions on the grounds that things *usually" work that way.