I’m just perplexed how kids are still religious in 2024 with vast amount of free information out there. I thought this cult bullshit was about to end with my generation when we got free, unrestricted information exchange invented.
I guess you can’t fix irrationality with rationality huh
From my perspective its because people won’t change their beliefs unless they stop benefiting the believer. For people who live in a religious community, there church’s sunday social event is enjoyable, there friends are all religious, there denomination provides a entire moral framework and worldview they don’t even need to think about. Confirmation bias plays a major role in preventing alternate thought to block out other worldviews.
Only when someone does not gain much benefit from there religion or has a important part of there religion proven wrong, can they process alternative ideologies and either switch to a more useful denomination or stop believing entirely.
The funny thing is that those words somehow have actual meaning. Metaphysics is the philosophy of existance. I believe the “true” metaphysics he refers to is the fact that it is unknowable if anything other then you exists, because there is no guarantee you are not a bozmian brain or living in a simulation along other things.
This ability combined with rationality can allow you to adapt to changes in your perception of reality, while other frameworks can’t (for example there are still people who don’t believe in evolution because there interpretation of god is dependent on god creating all species at the start)
I put it in quotes because truth in this context is likely not binary. Here, “true” as in something that can be researched and argumented for rather than something that requires pure faith.
Agreed, though for most believing in irrational things is “fine” (in that it doesn’t harm them) until someone shows up to take advantage of it (I’m guessing at least one person is using ai to make it look like they can perform holy miracles on Facebook).
Exactly, its fine until it isn’t. Unfortunately most people don’t seem to realize just because there beliefs work in the present doesn’t mean they will continue to be beneficial in the future (e.g. a christian being recruited to work for free at the pastors business because “it is gods will”)
Yep I have a friend who joined a church after not going to one for years because of the social aspects of it. Lots of people their age to relate to.
We just need better secular groups to join with those benefits that aren’t tied to religion. It’s one of the reasons I’m always apprehensive about volunteering because I don’t want the connection to religion. I know it doesn’t matter my intent for those who benefit/what benefits from the volunteering, but it affects my long term commitment to the cause.
Its a shame as well because many of the old social places such as rotary club and the masonic lodges have died out, and the new “third places” are online and/or expensive to access (vrchat comes to mind). Its no wonder so many people use social media these days.
That’s taking it too far, in my opinion. I realize it’s supremely unpopular to be a person of faith nowadays, especially online, but you can’t say that anyone with faith is stupid and it’s all bullshit as a blanket statement. You don’t know what happens after we die, and neither do I. I can’t prove that God definitely exists and I’ll probably never convince you of it, but by the same token, you can’t prove that God doesn’t exist.
Where we diverge is I think it’s okay that you believe that. And yes, of course you can point out the shitty people that use religion to persecute and restrict others’ rights, to punish, and worse. Many people do this, but they are still the vocal minority we hear about. And it’s not like there haven’t been terrible atheists/agnostics who have done awful things not motivated by religion…
Me, personally, I also won’t attend any church that tries to be political or tell its members how to vote. I am a Christian, but I try to model my religious activity on the Sikhs: quiet, respectful, loving outreach to improve the world. So I can acknowledge the problems, but no, I don’t think all religion is bad nor every person of faith stupid…
They didn’t say stupid, you did. They said irrational, which it is. You’re right no one can prove that there is no afterlife, but believing in something that there is no evidence for is the definition of irrational. That doesn’t mean I’m saying you’re stupid, I’m just saying that it’s irrational. No need to get offended, that’s just what words mean.
And remember that it’s not an insult. Even a lot of science depends on taking an irrational position to discover things. Doing irrational things in life can sometimes be way more rewarding than doing rational things.
Trying to explain to someone that their take is not evidence-based though… most jump to the conclusion that you’re saying they’re wrong.
It’s not the belief that makes you “stupid” is the irrationality of the whole package. If you’re looking for metaphysics answers - we got them. People tried to figure out this stuff since the beginning of time with rationality and logic and even experiments rather than blind faith to words they never even heard personally. That’s the difference.
I don’t discriminate against the religious but it’s really easy to argue that reglious approach is taking the easy approach to metaphysics and it’s something important to consider here.
Religions are cults that have grown bigger than normal cult size. Just because a religion isn’t a Western religion, doesn’t mean it’s any better than a big cult
Nah they’re still cults. People have this morphed view that religion is not a cult when it is by the very definition of it:
cult n: followers of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices
Not to say that cults can’t be net good in some form but once they grow past local community I think it’s just impossible to not lose the mission to bad actors.
I prefer this view. Limiting the definition of cults to “small” or “based around a person” is missing the point that all religions are self-preserving in-groups that offer “truths” that will limit your worldview by excluding others, and practices that differentiate followers behaviorally.
But also beliefs can be useful. For example, the idea of an afterlife or reincarnation can help reduce the fear of death. The belief of forgiveness for sins, can offer redemption. That random events have meaning. That we are not alone when we are alone. All cognitively useful and therapeutic.
Opposing beliefs can be held at the same time. I can know that probabilistically, or based on personal experience, or empirical evidence, that death is either an ending or an unknowable, and still choose to believe in reincarnation because it does give more meaning to my actions and reduce fear of death.
And cult practices are often as good for the individual as the beliefs. Having community and regular social interaction is critical to human health. Conducting rituals and ceremonies give structure, meaning and comfort to the parts of our days and lives. Praying and meditating. Charity and service and on and on. These are all useful, healthy to the individual and to society.
When we can learn to adopt these things without closing our minds to other worldviews and possibilities, without in-group fear and defensiveness, without superiority and proselytization we’ll be in a better world that’s still full of cults
I disagree that irrational beliefs can be net good. Belief in the afterlife isn’t the only way to make peace with death, but the normalization of magical thinking makes people easier to deceive and more likely to try alternative-solutions (as opposed to vaccination or chemotherapy).
I understand your point, but I think that magical and mythical thinking are fully part of how our minds evolved and still work, and if we fully develop our faculties of rationalization, almost everyone still thinks magically. Think about ideas like luck, or a fear of something improbable, or most of our expectations in life. Or why many masters of logic still believe in mythical beings and afterlives.
If you talk to someone from an animistic culture, they don’t need to question or have a structure of reasoning in place to explain why the waterfall has a spirit. It just does, it always has and it’s obvious. However, if a person who lives in a wealthy country today, had public education and believes that vaccines are dangerous. They will believe it rationally, not irrationally, and have a slew of rationalizations for the belief. These are two types of magical thinking, but the former has a magical worldview and the latter does not.
Rationality is weak against many types of thinking and motivation, and there are many more steps in the maturation of a mind. I do personally agree that a solid foundation in rational thinking should underlie whatever beliefs, morals, ethics, and insights a person adopts. But it is also highly likely that in my examples the former person is healthier and happier than the latter person, and both could be just as gullible.
The name of a single character from their religious stories tells me nothing about their behavior
She’s a god, represents time, change, power, creation, preservation, destruction…she’s a mother figure… You haven’t given me any useful information. Maybe give a link or something with information about her relevance to cult behavior?
It still pushes the “us vs them” mentality that any religion does, which in my opinion makes it no better than others. And truth be told, scripture and dogma has nothing to do with it either, it’s all just tribalism.
The Indian government under Modi pushes a nationalist Hindu agenda which encourages violence against religious minorities like Muslims and Sikhs. This causes religious extremism, directed towards establishing a national Hindu religion in India like you see with Islam and Judaism in the Middle East.
And before anyone says Buddhism is different (I was raised in a Buddhist household, to clarify), see Myanmar’s conflict with the Rohingya which is perpetuated by militant Buddhists. Sri Lanka has also long been dealing with similar acts of violence against the Tamil Hindus and Arab Muslims perpetuated by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority.
Any religion has the propensity to become “cult-like” based on social circumstances, and this is heightened all the more when nationalism is thrown into the mix.
Imo cults have more to do with in-groups and out-groups and their relation in your mental space.
If your in-group is worth more to you than the total sum of all out-groups; you are in a cult.
Humanity is one race, subdividing it and labelling all the chunks is where we went wrong. The fact we have a word to describe this outcome shows we are pretty far down this tube.
If you’re reading this and think to yourself “surely this person is misled, they’re not a part of (insert religion) so wouldn’t know anything about what they say” congratulations, you’re right (and also in a cult).
but internet does all that too. Especially more immersive social media like Youtube or podcasts. I’m generally very optimistic but the progress of our information network as someone who lived through it turned out much weaker than we thought it’d be. Maybe that human exposure of college is much more powerful thant basically infinite knowledge at your fingertips.
By bro still believes because they get you so early. I basically tell him he’s an idiot for being a christian, also fucking his kids up, but jesus says it’s cool. So that is how it happens.
My friend got sucked into it because of a girl. His parents weren’t religious. I don’t think he had gone to church more than twice in his life by high school, and he, just like the rest of us, trash talked our school’s requirements to have a ‘chapel’ hour once a week. He was as blasé as they come about religion, perhaps an agnostic in the christian hemisphere at best, but when he started dating a christian girl, he went to church with her, made friends with her friends at church, etc. Now 15 years later he’s indoctrinating his kids with her, and a deacon at his church. The power of social influence is enormous. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to break free, or even just consider information that is contradictory, if you have the combination of early influence and the later social influence from family, friends, and the wider social circle that is part and parcel of a church.
Inoculating believers against rational counter-arguments is a powerful tool. Do it right, and the vast amount of information at their fingertips might seem like the whole secular world is conspiring against them.
I’m a Zoomer, and one of my best friends is very religious precisely because of the internet. He reads the Bible online a lot, and is in a bunch of Christian Discord servers, and often reads up theology. To be fair, he is very progressive on pretty much all issues except birth control, he isn’t a blind authority-obeyer, and is totally fine with me being agnostic.
Well, if you question it, you are a bad person and going to hell. It’s not that God doesn’t love you, but you are forcing God to send you to hell because you are choosing to question.
Yes I’ve been paying attention, however it remains baffling to me as I see curiosity as essential as breathing or eating, so perhaps the question may be better asked as, how is inhibiting curiosity not recognized as a form of abuse?
The hate and negativity is such a big part of it. It’s kind of the foundation, really. It sounds simple, but it is the main thing I had to train out of my brain while figuring out wtf I want out of life and how to enjoy the journey.
If I’m hanging out with family still stuck in that mindset and discussing an acquaintance? You bet I’m going to hear what race they are (if not white, which is the default human in their minds), how big of a house they have, how much money they make, and of course how stupid they are. Nothing of substance.
All that negativity, paranoia, and anger makes it much easier to get the conservative base to not spend time thinking about the suffering of others, and instead think about how much stuff they’ve acquired and how the “other” people want to steal it.
It’s a strange position for me to be in, personally. I can see how somebody would stay immersed in that shitty mindset for life without exposure to the wider world, because I know the feeling of living in that mindset (let’s call it high school). However, I also have eyes and ears and access to the internet, and I think all available information should be considered even if reality has a liberal bias.
Indoctrinated parents indoctrinate kids.
See also: religion.
I’m just perplexed how kids are still religious in 2024 with vast amount of free information out there. I thought this cult bullshit was about to end with my generation when we got free, unrestricted information exchange invented.
I guess you can’t fix irrationality with rationality huh
From my perspective its because people won’t change their beliefs unless they stop benefiting the believer. For people who live in a religious community, there church’s sunday social event is enjoyable, there friends are all religious, there denomination provides a entire moral framework and worldview they don’t even need to think about. Confirmation bias plays a major role in preventing alternate thought to block out other worldviews.
Only when someone does not gain much benefit from there religion or has a important part of there religion proven wrong, can they process alternative ideologies and either switch to a more useful denomination or stop believing entirely.
But being closer to more “true” metaphysics and rationality is benefiting, though I guess that’s probably not obviously apparent to everyone.
What does this even mean. What are “true” metaphysics? Please tell me you’re not just going to spew pseudoscientific nonsense at me.
My man popped some DMT then hopped on Lemmy
The funny thing is that those words somehow have actual meaning. Metaphysics is the philosophy of existance. I believe the “true” metaphysics he refers to is the fact that it is unknowable if anything other then you exists, because there is no guarantee you are not a bozmian brain or living in a simulation along other things.
This ability combined with rationality can allow you to adapt to changes in your perception of reality, while other frameworks can’t (for example there are still people who don’t believe in evolution because there interpretation of god is dependent on god creating all species at the start)
I put it in quotes because truth in this context is likely not binary. Here, “true” as in something that can be researched and argumented for rather than something that requires pure faith.
Agreed, though for most believing in irrational things is “fine” (in that it doesn’t harm them) until someone shows up to take advantage of it (I’m guessing at least one person is using ai to make it look like they can perform holy miracles on Facebook).
But isn’t that harm them? maybe indirectly but restricting your world view will restrict your agency. i.e. people will take advantage of you.
Exactly, its fine until it isn’t. Unfortunately most people don’t seem to realize just because there beliefs work in the present doesn’t mean they will continue to be beneficial in the future (e.g. a christian being recruited to work for free at the pastors business because “it is gods will”)
Yep I have a friend who joined a church after not going to one for years because of the social aspects of it. Lots of people their age to relate to.
We just need better secular groups to join with those benefits that aren’t tied to religion. It’s one of the reasons I’m always apprehensive about volunteering because I don’t want the connection to religion. I know it doesn’t matter my intent for those who benefit/what benefits from the volunteering, but it affects my long term commitment to the cause.
Its a shame as well because many of the old social places such as rotary club and the masonic lodges have died out, and the new “third places” are online and/or expensive to access (vrchat comes to mind). Its no wonder so many people use social media these days.
That’s taking it too far, in my opinion. I realize it’s supremely unpopular to be a person of faith nowadays, especially online, but you can’t say that anyone with faith is stupid and it’s all bullshit as a blanket statement. You don’t know what happens after we die, and neither do I. I can’t prove that God definitely exists and I’ll probably never convince you of it, but by the same token, you can’t prove that God doesn’t exist.
Where we diverge is I think it’s okay that you believe that. And yes, of course you can point out the shitty people that use religion to persecute and restrict others’ rights, to punish, and worse. Many people do this, but they are still the vocal minority we hear about. And it’s not like there haven’t been terrible atheists/agnostics who have done awful things not motivated by religion…
Me, personally, I also won’t attend any church that tries to be political or tell its members how to vote. I am a Christian, but I try to model my religious activity on the Sikhs: quiet, respectful, loving outreach to improve the world. So I can acknowledge the problems, but no, I don’t think all religion is bad nor every person of faith stupid…
Edit: spelling
They didn’t say stupid, you did. They said irrational, which it is. You’re right no one can prove that there is no afterlife, but believing in something that there is no evidence for is the definition of irrational. That doesn’t mean I’m saying you’re stupid, I’m just saying that it’s irrational. No need to get offended, that’s just what words mean.
And remember that it’s not an insult. Even a lot of science depends on taking an irrational position to discover things. Doing irrational things in life can sometimes be way more rewarding than doing rational things.
Trying to explain to someone that their take is not evidence-based though… most jump to the conclusion that you’re saying they’re wrong.
It’s not the belief that makes you “stupid” is the irrationality of the whole package. If you’re looking for metaphysics answers - we got them. People tried to figure out this stuff since the beginning of time with rationality and logic and even experiments rather than blind faith to words they never even heard personally. That’s the difference.
I don’t discriminate against the religious but it’s really easy to argue that reglious approach is taking the easy approach to metaphysics and it’s something important to consider here.
Religion is not always a cult. All religions are not like Christianity.
See Hinduism, Buddhism, confussionism
Religions are cults that have grown bigger than normal cult size. Just because a religion isn’t a Western religion, doesn’t mean it’s any better than a big cult
If I didn’t know about the Hindus and Muslims “beefing” (pun intended) in India, I’d be inclined to believe you.
Nah they’re still cults. People have this morphed view that religion is not a cult when it is by the very definition of it:
Not to say that cults can’t be net good in some form but once they grow past local community I think it’s just impossible to not lose the mission to bad actors.
I prefer this view. Limiting the definition of cults to “small” or “based around a person” is missing the point that all religions are self-preserving in-groups that offer “truths” that will limit your worldview by excluding others, and practices that differentiate followers behaviorally.
But also beliefs can be useful. For example, the idea of an afterlife or reincarnation can help reduce the fear of death. The belief of forgiveness for sins, can offer redemption. That random events have meaning. That we are not alone when we are alone. All cognitively useful and therapeutic.
Opposing beliefs can be held at the same time. I can know that probabilistically, or based on personal experience, or empirical evidence, that death is either an ending or an unknowable, and still choose to believe in reincarnation because it does give more meaning to my actions and reduce fear of death.
And cult practices are often as good for the individual as the beliefs. Having community and regular social interaction is critical to human health. Conducting rituals and ceremonies give structure, meaning and comfort to the parts of our days and lives. Praying and meditating. Charity and service and on and on. These are all useful, healthy to the individual and to society.
When we can learn to adopt these things without closing our minds to other worldviews and possibilities, without in-group fear and defensiveness, without superiority and proselytization we’ll be in a better world that’s still full of cults
I disagree that irrational beliefs can be net good. Belief in the afterlife isn’t the only way to make peace with death, but the normalization of magical thinking makes people easier to deceive and more likely to try alternative-solutions (as opposed to vaccination or chemotherapy).
I understand your point, but I think that magical and mythical thinking are fully part of how our minds evolved and still work, and if we fully develop our faculties of rationalization, almost everyone still thinks magically. Think about ideas like luck, or a fear of something improbable, or most of our expectations in life. Or why many masters of logic still believe in mythical beings and afterlives.
If you talk to someone from an animistic culture, they don’t need to question or have a structure of reasoning in place to explain why the waterfall has a spirit. It just does, it always has and it’s obvious. However, if a person who lives in a wealthy country today, had public education and believes that vaccines are dangerous. They will believe it rationally, not irrationally, and have a slew of rationalizations for the belief. These are two types of magical thinking, but the former has a magical worldview and the latter does not.
Rationality is weak against many types of thinking and motivation, and there are many more steps in the maturation of a mind. I do personally agree that a solid foundation in rational thinking should underlie whatever beliefs, morals, ethics, and insights a person adopts. But it is also highly likely that in my examples the former person is healthier and happier than the latter person, and both could be just as gullible.
Hinduism is the textbook definition of a cult. It’s just old AF, so we give it a pass.
How tho
I suggest you look up Kali for a start.
The name of a single character from their religious stories tells me nothing about their behavior
She’s a god, represents time, change, power, creation, preservation, destruction…she’s a mother figure… You haven’t given me any useful information. Maybe give a link or something with information about her relevance to cult behavior?
Hmph. Maybe look up “Hinduism is a cult” and then scroll until you read a preview that fits my beliefs
Kali Linux?
Linux is definitely a cult, and I am a proud cultist
Found the lemmy Linux meme user
It still pushes the “us vs them” mentality that any religion does, which in my opinion makes it no better than others. And truth be told, scripture and dogma has nothing to do with it either, it’s all just tribalism.
The Indian government under Modi pushes a nationalist Hindu agenda which encourages violence against religious minorities like Muslims and Sikhs. This causes religious extremism, directed towards establishing a national Hindu religion in India like you see with Islam and Judaism in the Middle East.
And before anyone says Buddhism is different (I was raised in a Buddhist household, to clarify), see Myanmar’s conflict with the Rohingya which is perpetuated by militant Buddhists. Sri Lanka has also long been dealing with similar acts of violence against the Tamil Hindus and Arab Muslims perpetuated by the Sinhalese Buddhist majority.
Any religion has the propensity to become “cult-like” based on social circumstances, and this is heightened all the more when nationalism is thrown into the mix.
Religion is always a cult. Those people are no less delusional than the chrstians.
Nah, religion is always a cult.
Imo cults have more to do with in-groups and out-groups and their relation in your mental space.
If your in-group is worth more to you than the total sum of all out-groups; you are in a cult.
Humanity is one race, subdividing it and labelling all the chunks is where we went wrong. The fact we have a word to describe this outcome shows we are pretty far down this tube.
If you’re reading this and think to yourself “surely this person is misled, they’re not a part of (insert religion) so wouldn’t know anything about what they say” congratulations, you’re right (and also in a cult).
Most people are not actually people, they are people-like imposter automatons and they are dumb as hell and can be manipulated like clay.
A lot of them need to be actively exposed to other views and opinions to break free. So usually when they go to college.
but internet does all that too. Especially more immersive social media like Youtube or podcasts. I’m generally very optimistic but the progress of our information network as someone who lived through it turned out much weaker than we thought it’d be. Maybe that human exposure of college is much more powerful thant basically infinite knowledge at your fingertips.
By bro still believes because they get you so early. I basically tell him he’s an idiot for being a christian, also fucking his kids up, but jesus says it’s cool. So that is how it happens.
My friend got sucked into it because of a girl. His parents weren’t religious. I don’t think he had gone to church more than twice in his life by high school, and he, just like the rest of us, trash talked our school’s requirements to have a ‘chapel’ hour once a week. He was as blasé as they come about religion, perhaps an agnostic in the christian hemisphere at best, but when he started dating a christian girl, he went to church with her, made friends with her friends at church, etc. Now 15 years later he’s indoctrinating his kids with her, and a deacon at his church. The power of social influence is enormous. I can’t imagine how difficult it must be to break free, or even just consider information that is contradictory, if you have the combination of early influence and the later social influence from family, friends, and the wider social circle that is part and parcel of a church.
Inoculating believers against rational counter-arguments is a powerful tool. Do it right, and the vast amount of information at their fingertips might seem like the whole secular world is conspiring against them.
I’m a Zoomer, and one of my best friends is very religious precisely because of the internet. He reads the Bible online a lot, and is in a bunch of Christian Discord servers, and often reads up theology. To be fair, he is very progressive on pretty much all issues except birth control, he isn’t a blind authority-obeyer, and is totally fine with me being agnostic.
Uh…?
Stupid comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, and ages. 🤪
See also: reactionary movements.
I sometimes really want to show those reactionary gamers a trial version of the authoritarian society they stive for…
So send them a documentary on what happened in NAZI Germany.
But don’t be surprised when they tell you that’s exactly what they want because they’re white men and it puts them at the top of the heirarchy.
But their geeky stuff wouldn’t survive any of that…
They won’t understand that until they’re in the middle of it.
How do you indoctrinate the curiosity out of people? 😬
Well, if you question it, you are a bad person and going to hell. It’s not that God doesn’t love you, but you are forcing God to send you to hell because you are choosing to question.
Choosy moms with free will choose jiff
Actually it’s pronounced jiff
Really? Have you not been paying attention?
Yes I’ve been paying attention, however it remains baffling to me as I see curiosity as essential as breathing or eating, so perhaps the question may be better asked as, how is inhibiting curiosity not recognized as a form of abuse?
Yep. They were taught to hate people and that “Trumps” voting to improve things, or bring down costs…
The hate and negativity is such a big part of it. It’s kind of the foundation, really. It sounds simple, but it is the main thing I had to train out of my brain while figuring out wtf I want out of life and how to enjoy the journey.
If I’m hanging out with family still stuck in that mindset and discussing an acquaintance? You bet I’m going to hear what race they are (if not white, which is the default human in their minds), how big of a house they have, how much money they make, and of course how stupid they are. Nothing of substance.
All that negativity, paranoia, and anger makes it much easier to get the conservative base to not spend time thinking about the suffering of others, and instead think about how much stuff they’ve acquired and how the “other” people want to steal it.
It’s a strange position for me to be in, personally. I can see how somebody would stay immersed in that shitty mindset for life without exposure to the wider world, because I know the feeling of living in that mindset (let’s call it high school). However, I also have eyes and ears and access to the internet, and I think all available information should be considered even if reality has a liberal bias.