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Comment by iamcasen | Hacker News Reader

Hmmm, this seems a bit problematic to me. I agree, a majority of the big religions and churches no longer fit with the times. People will always crave spirituality, but these days they are rejecting religions. I think that's ok.

That being said, I don't think rituals can be trivialized in this way. Some of the most powerful rituals are definitely packed with the wisdom of thousands of years of practice, some of which is only now starting to be understood by modern science (fasting, and how it boosts immune health comes to mind).

We are losing touch with that ancient lineage, and I think that's a mistake.

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I don't think many of the supposed benefits of fasting have been conclusively proven (as much as once can conclusively prove something in science, I mean) but there are some indications that it has a good effect on health.

However, even if that's the case, you still have to prove that the reason fasting was part of the rituals was because of the health benefits.

I think any definition of "modern science" that excludes existing human knowledge is not sufficiently broad. Though, as an inexact and informal term, I question where you've drawn the boundary and whether your own prejudices are involved.

Sure, I suppose I mean modern science as "accepted and peer reviewed."

There are lots of ancient rituals that on the surface, probably appear totally pointless, and maybe even ridiculous. Just like fasting though, it might turn out to play a significant role in our health and well-being.

It's all bullshit and without wisdom. Just because you want to believe something is true or holds truths doesn't make it so.

If you put all religion and ideologies ever invented in one hand and the concept of washing your hands in the other, washing your hands wins without contest.

Spoken like a true dogmatist!

Because you totally have to choose between those things, and may only ever avail yourself of one of them.

I'm just pointing out woo has little value other than a source of fiction.

No, you're being casually dismissive.

"It's all bullshit and without wisdom", emphasis added; you don't make a distinction between woo and otherwise — and not all spirituality, or even religion, is woo, I promise you.

If you're going to hand-wave like that, you're not doing whatever point you might have had any service, except perhaps in gathering "Yeah, what he said!" votes from people who already share your beliefs, and antagonizing people who might think differently — people from whom you might learn something, if you were to try listening over dismissing.

I could enumerate I don't even know how many cases of "ancient wisdom" where people were forbade doing dangerous things — like, say, the Kashrut tradition against eating shellfish and pork before we had a meaningful notion of germs — absent the specific understanding we have now, that tells us why doing that was a bad idea.

But I don't need to; you're the one making the positive, and unsupported, assertion that other people's world-views are "bullshit".

Any sane person would chose washing your hands and more useful knowledge than the collected wisdom mentioned. People can rarely be woken up from wishful thinking and in the cases they were they did the work themselves.

And now your position is that people who disagree with you are insane.

Yeah, this dialogue is going places...

I think you would benefit by spending a bit more time studying history and how the various religions and ideologies shaped cultures and civilizations.

>all religion and ideologies

The rule of law is an ideology that is probably a bit more important that the singular concept of washing your hands.

Well I did my masters in history of ideas, but I guess I didn't understand the smart.

masters in history of ideas

That’s not a thing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ideas

wash your hands.

How you could spend a year or two studying the history of ideas and come out with such a flippant attitude is beyond me. We wouldn't have germ theory in the first place if it weren't for the ideologies that made scientific advancement possible.

I stand by my original advice that more study would be beneficial.

This kind of appeal to authority is not only strictly useless, in this case it's also kind of hilarious in how much you appear to have missed the point. You spent all that time studying, but you never took the time to take a step back and have a more measured response to something you don't agree with?

The worst ideologues are the ones who claim to be immune from ideology. It's absolutely impossible.

It's not like those are mutually exclusive, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handwashing_in_Judaism

Google Chesterton's fence.

The ubiquity of religion means that it is probably an evolved trait in some way. Evolved traits are not typically useless...

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