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Comment by JBReefer | Hacker News Reader

I see this opinion a lot, and it bothers me. The idea that Intelligence + Education == Secularism 100% of the time is kind of sad, because there is so much to be gained from reading religious texts and religious philosophy.

I guess it's a part of that larger "everyone before us was stupid" thing that seems big now, but I promise, the major names in religious thinking were brilliant. There is something to believing in something greater than what we see, and when you go on atheist forums, they never really seem like enlightened or happy places.

I don't really have a cogent argument here, but this smells like 1950s Utopianism, where everything that went before was considered obsolete, and many of the good parts of culture and our cities were just thrown away in the name of progress.

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> when you go on atheist forums, they never really seem like enlightened or happy places.

That's because only dogmatic atheists would frequent those places. I am an atheist / agnostic, and have been my entire life, but I've never understood why I would seek out community with others over a shared non-belief. So what if we both don't believe in some particular thing? That's no basis for a connection at all. I also got over the need to let others know about being an atheist in about 6th grade.

Always bothered me slightly that I was expected to define myself by something I don't believe in

I think is the difference between atheist and anti-theist. They are united by their disdain for religion.

This is it. In a largely secular society, an atheist group makes no sense, but in a largely theistic society, an atheist group is natural.

cf. the "non-golfing club" joke I can't remember who made

> cf. the "non-golfing club" joke I can't remember who made

You mean ateeists?

> https://www.reddit.com/r/nongolfers/

I don't think the two are mutually exclusive. It is possible to be secular and still learn from religious texts and philosophy. In fact I think that is probably something to strive for.

Perhaps I misread you, but it almost seems as if you are suggesting that this brilliance cannot be accessed by secular minds.

Oh I didn't mean that at all! More that:

a. Even if you don't believe, don't look down your nose by default at believers b. I agree - something people should strive for c. The kneejerk reactions (you can see some of them in this thread) to look down on believers makes me sad. The smartest 3 people I know came to be deeply religious from atheism at 30+.

> The idea that Intelligence + Education == Secularism 100% of the time is kind of sad, because there is so much to be gained from reading religious texts and religious philosophy.

First of all, correlation is not causation. Education does not get you to secularism, but secular societies happen to be more educated. And gaining by reading and studying religious texts does not imply believing in them. You can consider them beautiful and worth preserving and at the same time believe they do not explain reality or contain many (original) insights.

I don't think that the ideas "Intelligence + Education == Secularism" and "religious texts are useful" are mutually exclusive.

It might be sad but it is empirical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence

And yet, there are extremely smart people, like Donald Knuth, who are religious.

So? there are extremely dumb people who are religious. And also not religious. Statistics is not about the individual.

From that very page:

Researcher Gregory S. Paul suggests that economic development has a closer relationship with religiosity.[27] He argues that once any "nation's population becomes prosperous and secure, for example through economic security and universal health care, much of the population loses interest in seeking the aid and protection of supernatural entities." Other studies have shown that increased wealth is correlated with a decline in religious beliefs.[28][29] Indeed, the majority of the nations that showed a strong relationship between low religiosity and high IQ in the 2008 study were developed nations.[5]

>The most extreme levels of average education correspond with the highest level of secularization in the Nordic countries

>I see this opinion a lot, and it bothers me.

This is not an opinion, it is a statement of fact. And quite honestly, there's a big difference between reading religious texts and extracting philosophical value, and actually believing in magic sky fairies or some such. Regardless of the value of any particular incidental trappings of religion, the fundamental defining feature is the belief in some form of nonsense. Otherwise it's merely "philosophy".

> when you go on atheist forums, they never really seem like enlightened or happy places.

OTOH, if you go to forums consisting of people united by a common purpose which is neither religious not the mere absence of religion, you'll find enlightened and happy atheist contributor in many of those enlightened and happy forums.

Your view of atheism seems as warped as the view of religion you complain about.

I think there's a difference from the average atheist (and in the modern world, such a person is more likely to be an apatheist or at least an agnostic), and the more zealous people who frequent places like /r/atheism or even alt.atheism back in the day. Such communities are more self-selecting, and it has more to do with the temperament of the people present than their actual lack of religious belief.

> reading religious texts and religious philosophy

as texts and philosophy, yes, as works of fiction-unless-evidenced-otherwise, as literature that chronicles a staggering amount of human history, large-scale social organization, belief and gullibility and "leaps of faith", the search for meaning, and so on.

They are very useful as books.

I'm curious what some of the good parts that you think were thrown away were?

With cities? Walkability, huge public transit networks in LA, KC and others, middle class Black neighborhoods, mixed use zoning ... We lost a lot.

With religion, we're losing rituals where people come together frequently to celebrate life milestones and our relationships - baptism, brisses, confirmation, etc. We also lose a third space and a community of people we don't just happen to work with and live near. A huge part of our social lives, historically, happened in and around religion.

> With religion, we're losing rituals where people come together frequently to celebrate life milestones and our relationships - baptism, brisses, confirmation, etc. We also lose a third space and a community of people we don't just happen to work with and live near. A huge part of our social lives, historically, happenedin and around religion.

It's possible to have this kind of community and third-space outside of religion; really any community of common interest can work, though the milestones may be different (though things like childbirth, marriage, etc., are pretty common.)

Heck, I am religious, and I have an important community of this type through ballroom dance.

> A huge part of our social lives, historically, happened in and around religion.

Sure. But if the religious content itself isn't important, there's no reason you can't have other centers of social life that provide the same thing without the religious content. Forming social groups is something humans are pretty strongly oriented to doing.

> With religion, we're losing rituals where people come together frequently to celebrate life milestones and our relationships - baptism, brisses, confirmation, etc.

Most of those rituals have nothing to do with religion and are still being performed. To realize that the ritual of baptism does not calm any 'gods' not grant you their favors, and that some drops of water do not exclude you from an eternity of ("made up") torture and suffering, seems to me to be a good thing. People are abandoning them because when you take all the parts they can no longer believe in there is nothing left. They keep what is useful to them.

> We also lose a third space and a community of people we don't just happen to work with and live near. A huge part of our social lives, historically, happened in and around religion.

People used to socialize in caves, then in temples, then in churches. Now in coffee shops and the gym. And Facebook. Who knows what's to come. Things change.

But it's not an "opinion."

It's a fact when you look at the data. Whether you think more education leading to secularization is good or bad is not the point.

However I think you're setting up secularization as a straw man based on your experience with the most militant American atheists on "forums." These are people who have an axe to grind after being oppressed by hyper evangelical or hyper strict catholic communities growing up. For example try growing up gay in one of those communities and see how cozy you feel toward religion aftwerward.

If you've ever traveled to the Nordic countries, you'd know that a majority of their populations still identify as belonging to the church for cultural reasons. Take Norway for example, an overwhelming majority don't believe in an actual diety, however they still identify as members of the church because they see and respect the cultural/tradition value in it. Which I see as a completely sensible way to deal with religion in modern life.

The two aren't mutually exclusive. That said, the vast majority of Nordic people have never had to deal with the oppression that tends to come from hyper religious people, thus no axe to grind.

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