What happens when social media manipulation targets religious faith?
thedailybeast.com
thedailybeast.com
This also sounds slightly nightmarish once every faith will start bidding wars for some piece of your soul.
I think the "moral duty" portion comes in on an individual basis within the church so it's a character building exercise to spread the faith as well as a moral duty. I can definitely see what you mean though there could easily be some interpretations that lead to Ads.
I thought the two titles (LDS and Mormon) were basically synonymous?
> "Mormon" is being phased out in favor of "LSD".
Which is also very true at societal level.
Two on one in mission work, and they also use billboards, TV ads, and other media extensively.
> It does happen I've seen Ads for the LDS Church before (you'll never see one for Mormons).
Presumably, this is a reference to the whole issue of the official name of the Church and the strong preference for it in media of all kinds, but ironically the the LDS official youth-oriented insipirational poster line is called “Mormonads”.
https://www.lds.org/media-library/images/categories/mormonad...
That doesn't sound that materially different from the world we already live in....
Just be glad they're bidding wars and not real wars (for the moment).
>First, means to an end can be costly, or otherwise objectionable. Suppose that I ought to take a job in Alaska. One (sufficient) means is to fly there; another (sufficient) means is to take free passage on a merchant ship. But flying costs more than I would earn there. Presumably, I ought not fly. It may be said that I have some reason to fly, but that it is outweighed. This is an argument against Ought Sufficiency.
Really, though, I wonder if these things really should be a non-issue, and we should teach kids to ignore all advertising, and give basic critical-thinking skills from a young age.
Advertising and proselytization really shouldn't be as effective as they are; I think a large part of this is because (at least when I was a child) children aren't given the necessary skills to differentiate marketing from facts.
As such, faith is inherently dishonest, in that it involves lying to yourself about how certain you should be, and that faith is not a virtue, but a vice.
In traditional Christian theology, my understanding is that it's the willingness to live one's life on the premise that various propositions are in fact true. So in that context, exercising faith isn't some form of mental gymnastics; it's a willingness to bet everything on the hope that those propositions are true.
I wouldn't call that definition of faith inherently dishonest. I think it as a decision about how to proceed in the face of uncertainty.
And it does seem willfully intellectually dishonest to do that, no matter how you frame it. I say this as someone that was a believer for 20+ years and is no longer.
That said, I am not ascribing a value to whether "being intellectually dishonest" is always dangerous or bad for everyone. Overall I'd be inclined to say yes, at some deep/base level.
But, it depends on the person and the way they use it. There are plenty of caring people I know that are religious, and in some ways, they use that faith to inspire them to do good things. There is always another side to that coin, though.
That's really interesting to me. Can you elaborate on what about that strikes you as dishonest?
To me, that kind of decision in the face of uncertainty is a normal occurrence. For example, in college I had to pick some major, and despite uncertainty regarding what would give me the happiest life, I went with computer science.
Or to use a more well-worn example, when my wife tells me that she loves me, I admit there's the possibility that she's wrong, but as far as making decisions in life, I'm willing to assume she's telling the truth.
Neither of those two examples strike me as dishonest in any way, and the seem to fit the definition I gave.
If you have consistent, major evidence that your wife does not love you, then it would be intellectually dishonest to believe she does. Some religious faith does the equivalent of this- believing in spite of evidence.
The way you're framing "faith" to me is closer to what I would consider "trust" which IMHO is basically faith of future truth based on current evidence of said truth.
Of course, the final wrench, is believers have sources that they think are evidence (holy books)- but that faux-evidence is not the kind I am referencing.
Ex-Muslims can do similar thing with "Why did Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) marry a 6 year old girl?"