I'm happy to grab Fork #1 and hold on tight: every religion corresponds to a way of life That the Christian religion corresponds to a way of life revealed by God does not mean that it lacks sociological features and functions of other religions born of vain imaginings
-
-
Show this thread
-
If religious rationalism corroded the faith of the laity back in the 19th century, we're going to have to try again, and this time suck it up and be big boys
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
religion in the #1 sense is one of those "not whether, but which" sort of things
-
agreed. But do you think it's enough to say "Oh it's two different senses?" Because if Christian, then that also answers the "which" question (and excludes various alternatives).
-
part of what you run into is meta-level vs object-level stuff. like, "leftism is a religion" gets hard to make sense of if you want to compare 2018 lefty doctrinal content with 1918's. But there's certainly continuity there
-
say more, what do you think is the essence of the 1918/2018 comparison
-
the organizing principle of leftism is power, and doctrine shifts to accommodate whatever is needed to achieve it. I might even go so far as to say "leftism is a religion" only in the sense that every political formula is religious, a justification of right to rule
-
That is a good point. So we probably need an operational distinction between "TCY secular humanism," which informs a certain way of life, and leftism-as-powerlust
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
I always felt this in my gut. Critiquing the " religious" ethos of the modern left by maligning it as "religion" always struck me as a Sam Harris/ Rubin tier argument
-
If anything it speaks to a universal drive/religious impulse that rears its head up in many forms (when suppressed or forgotten)
-
Right. I don't mind using "It's just a hokey 20th c. religion" as a counter-argument b/c everyone understands you don't obey the laws of a cult unless you're in the cult
-
Its like how id talk about mormonism or jehov witness.
-
exactly. If someone says "Well of course there is life on other planets, think of all the starchildren" I'd remind them I'm not a Mormon.
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
If you understand Leftism (or perhaps: secular humanism) as a religion, you need to understand a religion as a structure with social functions such that you can identify functional analogues in different religions
-
Yet what many people claim was corrosive about Enlightenment religious rationalism was thinking about Christianity in just this way. But if all religions serve such function, a fortiori so must the true religion.
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
religious rationalism?
-
I don't mean in the scholastic sense but the Enlightenment sense; understanding religious practices as having some function that, say, increases cohesion in the parish, drawing parallels between elements of Christianity and other religions
-
yes reducing it to just that stuff is pretty gay. it is a useful tool for bringing atheists in but its only a step
-
And it's also a useful tool for understanding other ideologies and ways of life that you don't think are divinely inspired.
End of conversation
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.