Hacker News Reader

Comment by jf- | Hacker News Reader

That’s more a value system, or maybe an ideology, than a religion. Though I’ll agree the two do more or less occupy the same cognitive space. There is no need for anything mystical to be involved.

Today we are experimenting with new phenomena that have never been available to humanity en mass. Effective birth control, gender equality, freedom from restrictive social norms, all of these are very new, and indeed evolutionarily novel. We have not yet learned a tradition of how to operate in this space, we are the pioneers, and unfortunately a lot of missteps befall the pioneers.

Eventually through trial and error, and a kind of evolutionary process, we’ll figure it out, and then that will get passed down as the new value system. Then we’ll have kids again more or less following in the footsteps of their parents, they’ll just be footsteps we wouldn’t necessarily expect.

View on HN

> That’s more a value system, or maybe an ideology, than a religion.

The difference is that the social structure which promotes the value system is valuable in and of itself (this said as someone who grew up religious but is not anymore). A lot of people can't "walk the path" without others to walk with them.

The only issue is that sometimes that social structure has downsides like occasionally becoming politically charged, self-serving or abusive.

> Today we are experimenting with new phenomena

Pretty sure every generation from the beginning of time has thought of itself as a pioneer exposed to new forces and new phenomena. It's a bit arrogant to think that you're the one and only.

There are a multitude of other changes that have transformed our environment (agriculture, spoken language, written language, barter, commerce, etc.) over the millennia.

> There is no need for anything mystical to be involved.

And yet something mystical has been involved for thousands of years, in virtually every culture. When we tried to eradicate it forcefully (communism), bad things happened. Perhaps there's more to it than you think?

The pace of change over the last century makes the pace over the last few thousand years look like a crawl. Agriculture was not invented and brought to the point of industrialisation within a single human lifetime. I’d wager that spoken language took a bit longer than a few decades to perfect as well. You’re not comparing like with like.

> And yet something mystical...

People need explanations for things, when they don’t have them they invent them.

> When we tried to eradicate it forcefully (communism), bad things happened

This is a little disingenuous.

Yes, states described as communist attempted to eradicate religion; to do that, they merely replaced religion with the state. The state became the church, its leaders became the saints.

Don't conflate the example of failed, corrupt Stalinist communist states with the concept of the eradication of religion, they're not at all mutually inclusive.

> The state became the church, its leaders became the saints.

Can you name a single attempt to eradicate religion that didn't end up with the very description you provide?

No, but history’s follies are not the full extent of all possibilities and potential consequences.

Stalin brought back the orthodox church after Lenin got rid of it. When Stalin died, Khruschev cracked down on the church again.

Not quite. When he took power, he ruthlessly enforced atheism and slaughtered anyone who stood in his way. Only when he was fighting for his life with the Nazis did he find the Orthodox Church useful in his efforts. After he was done with the Nazis, he went back to his old tricks.

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

Stalin's relative clemency towards the orthodox church does give the lie to the idea that the policy is "Stalinist." It was a Leninist policy of long standing. Khruschev reverted to it despite his explicit denunciation of Stalinism.

> After he was done with the Nazis, he went back to his old tricks.

According to the article you yourself linked, he was pretty soft on them from after the war until his death.

>Effective birth control

What if at the end, we end up realizing that all there is to life is a struggle in order to propagate our own DNA, and that really this struggle may not be worth it? Humanity as a whole could decide that this is all there is, and then that ultimately there really is no point other than what you make it. What if humanity bucked it's genetic programming, recognizing it for what it really is. And recognizing that what we are really up against, is the laws of physics themselves. That we've been dealt a raw deal, meaning that we must work in some way to sustain our own being, and that only the laws of the universe stop us from being truly free. That in the end, birthing children really isn't a blessing, but a curse. And that truly the best gift you can give your unborn children is the gift of non-existence.

The other half of humanity that think that birthing children really is a blessing will outnumber you.

A blessing from who?

God?

I prefer to imagine our descendants being happy.

What's the "this" that is all there is? What is the struggle you describe, exactly, and what would it mean for it to be "worth" it? What do you mean by freedom, exactly, and on what basis is it good (you imply that it's good and important to be "truly free")?

Those questions are semi-rhetorical (although I'd love to hear an answer if you want to have a convo about it), but your paragraph rings some alarm bells for me. Have you read Thomas Nagel's "The Absurd"? I think it directly and decisively addresses many of the concerns you bring up.

Here's a link to the paper: https://philosophy.as.uky.edu/sites/default/files/The%20Absu...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com