Comment by Jedd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Jedd | Hacker News Reader

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> Becoming more religious has helped me identify religious tendencies in the secular world.

Do you believe that becoming religious made you smarter / more aware, or that it made you more eager to seek reassuring comparisons outside your religion?

> The secular world would benefit from adopting more formal definitions of their belief system.

Benefit whom? The 'secular world' is perhaps not as centrally organised as you may believe or wish for. (We meet at the Fox & Hound every second Wednesday.) Whether this is inconvenient for members of the secular world, members of various fantasy clubs, or both - is hard to say.

Personally I don't feel that a codification of my understanding of the universe (I struggle to think of it as a belief system, as that has connotations of faith and rigidity in the absence of evidence) is necessary. I do undeniably like the idea that my understanding of the universe (roughly) aligns, AFAICT, with that of other intelligent people I know, or whose works I see or read - but I'm not sure that's the same thing.

> If you believe you are not religious, it just means that you don’t have the cognitive tools to recognize the secular ideology that you have adopted.

Do you accept that perhaps intentionally non-religious people may not be as dumb as that assertion demands?

> Do you believe that becoming religious made you smarter / more aware

As in it's equipped me with mental models to understand which components of secular life are acts of faith & ritual vs reason.

> 'secular world' is perhaps not as centrally organised as you may believe or wish for

Nor is it uniform. But there are some overt and some covert aspects. the covert forces benefit from being nebulous.

One reason religions are so open to attack is that they have a clear identity and value system (not necessarily good, but at least clearly stated). If you think about it, you can have a healthier relationship with a religious opponent– as long as you have equal power, you can oppose each other in a healthy way.

The secular world is applying all sorts of demands & social pressures on you, and there's no way to oppose them, because secular ideology doesn't have an identity, an institution or value system open to attack. It's like fighting smoke or a swarm of bees.

> The secular world is applying all sorts of demands & social pressures on you, and there's no way to oppose them, because secular ideology doesn't have an identity, an institution or value system open to attack. It's like fighting smoke or a swarm of bees.

That's because there is no such thing as "secular ideology". It's a meaningless phrase.

Correct.

There is no such thing as "secular ideology". There are many. Just as there are many religions.

There is materialism+work ethic, there is materialism without work ethic, there is "wokeism" (to pin a definition, the belief that oppression is a fundamental societal force and clearly directional based on some enumerated characteristics), there is nationalism. There's even "startups" :P

But perhaps you have a grain of truth in that rarely is a "secular ideologist" a "monotheistic" (monoidealistic?) one. Usually one's identity holds a plurality of those identifications.

Also, people can have a strong identification to ideas without a community to back it up (another grain of truth, and the saddest part)

This is academically true but not practically true. sure there are various secular ideologies in the wild, but due to globalized media & culture, you will generally find major and minor dominant ideologies ruling over you personally.

Overall the point isn’t to say that all secular belief is the same. The point is that any secular ideology you follow will have the same characteristics of religious belief despite lacking definition.

> That's because there is no such thing as "secular ideology". It's a meaningless phrase.

Yes, there is no such thing, but it does not become meaningless, and so such be called 'something'

It is the opposite, the repudiation of 'religious ideology'

just like there is no such thing as 'cold' - it is the opposite of 'heat' which is measured, but 'cold' as such, holds some value in dialogue, so it is for 'secular ideology'

There is such a thing if one delves into definition of ideology. Depending on the definition, there either is or is not such a thing.

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