Kevin Simler

@hamandcheese @sarahdoingthing you mean that people *experience* rituals as transcendental instead of economic? (if so, totally...)

@hamandcheese (er, I'm a bit fuzzy on "transcendental")

@KevinSimler Say I argue that communion is a ritual people do to symbolically signal in-group commitment. Yet if asked that's not the case.

@KevinSimler The adherent may acknowledge that function exists, but says further that communion is a holy sacrament with intrinsic value

@hamandcheese totally. but in my view this is so much of human social behavior! we deny our social motives by claiming they're s.t. else

@hamandcheese usually the counterfactual shows what's up. if communion didn't strengthen community, people wouldn't do it. (this is my bias)

@KevinSimler I showed that state welfare substitutes for religious orgs. But I also think that "crowding out" does permanent damage

@KevinSimler Both by destroying social capital and by replacing the sacred with profane. What Habermas calls reification.