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im trying to make a point that 'religion' encompasses a phenomenon that isn't done justice by our concept of culture. i agree the lines are blurry and often coexist, but like... idk, did you watch the recent FLDS documentary on netflix? 'culture' feels inadequate to explain that

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sure but i feel like i'm trying to point at a real distinction here. If you take a group where people genuinely, earnestly believe that contradicting the prophet will make them burn in hell, and they make choices strictly out of that fear, it feels weird to call that 'culture'

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like, sure you can pull out the culture label to wrap around it, but the way we use culture feels more like 'basic norms' or 'social judgment' or 'moral disgust' is the thing that guides your behavior, not 'trying to avoid being tortured by a supernatural figure'

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im trying to say that the category of behavior that's influenced by literally believing in a specific supernatural system is something we should conceive of differently than behavior influenced by strung together moral justifications or trying not to be weird

11:38 PM · Aug 21, 2022

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Ime many discuss historical tragedies as well without truly internalizing that people believed what they did. Or see attempts to do so as defending or diminishing

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I think somewhere buried deep under it all there's something distinct, but I think that's true for fewer people and to a lesser degree than most of them would claim

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That sounds a lot like what happens when rationalists try to wrap their brains around a religious mindset: "given this initial irrational belief, this follows rationally from it." But consider maybe that these strung together moral justifications/trying to fit in are the point...

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I think the difference between secular and religious atrocities are a matter of aethetics. The preference between which is massively influenced by subjective experience.

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Are you just trying to describe an increased intensity of conviction? i.e. if I think that an action is literally commanded by God, and that the un-faithful are going to misunderstand and oppose me, I'm going to be less open to suggestion?

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Making the distinction may veer us away from understanding belief in ideas in general. Isn't culture a collection of ideas that facilitates survival of our species. It's our external evolutionary process. Religion has been the most successful at mass cooperation, but with flaws