[anon_d]

There are tons of things like this outside of religion. Almost every coherent group of people believes in some sort of nonsense for political reasons, and as a form of identity signaling.

- Many people in this community believe that a female soul can be mis-allocated to a male body, for example.

- Many people in this community believe that Trump was involved in a conspiracy with Putin to take over the USA.

- Many people in this community believe that democracy is a form of government that gives the population more power than other forms of government.

All of these beliefs are rather silly, but are accepted as dogma and critique is unwelcome.

----

I do agree, however, that the Christian church is predatory. It is matriarchal and is basically a system of domestication. However, the fact that they employ dogma is not the problem, all groups employ dogma.

[hotpotamus]

Seems like this is political flamebait, but I don't think I've ever seen the first point phrased in such a way that it refers to a soul. This makes me wonder, what part of that do you believe is nonsense? The existence of the soul?

[anon_d]

I have no interest in arguing against any of these points here.

All I am claiming is that they are a form of dogma. These beliefs look very silly to everyone outside of this culture.

They seem silly to everyone. To every other culture in the world, and to every culture of the past.

And yet, critiquing them within this culture is dangerous.

[hotpotamus]

It seems to me quite plainly clear that people exist who are confused about their gender and my understanding is that people like this exist in all cultures. I actually learned many years ago that Native Americans had a concept of something of a "third gender" which suggested to me that it's a universal human variation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-spirit

What I had never considered was to mix in the idea of a soul - it's actually curious because I never thought that the soul (if you believe in such a thing) would be gendered and it adds a curious layer to the whole situation. But now reading a little more about native beliefs, it seems that the two-spirit term actually thinks about it more as two souls within one body.

I find it all rather fascinating and hard to reduce down to silly dogma.

[anon_d]

The Thais have similar concept as well (third gender), but it isn't the same as the western Transgenderism construct.

> I find it all rather fascinating and hard to reduce down to silly dogma.

The phenomena itself isn't what I'm talking about. The specific belief that "Transgender women are women and they were born that way", and the enforcement of that belief, that is dogma.

Similarly, the belief that "some people are homosexual and some people are not, they are born one way or the other". This isn't consistent with reality, and isn't what other cultures believe. However, this is considered foundational, unquestionable truth in our culture.

[hotpotamus]

Ah, I think I can spot the difference, but it seems like a fairly trivial one to me. I bet cultures that categorize these people into a third gender would be offended if you mis-gendered them as well. And lol, I'm not too interested in going down the sexuality rabbit hole (hey-oh!) but suffice it to say it seems like in both instances you've got some people who see a spectrum and some who see a dichotomy. I don't think it's any surprise that I'm in the camp who sees a spectrum. I also understand wishing it all were a lot simpler.

[anon_d]

> but it seems like a fairly trivial one to me.

I don't see the difference as trivial.

The reality is that, across many cultures, there are men that have a strong desire to abandon the masculine role and to live quasi-female lives. The Thai and native american understanding matches this reality.

Our culture-makers decided to apply a specific dogma to this phenomena, and to propagate that dogma by force. That dogma has effects on society and was implemented because of it's effects on society. (For example, reality does not imply that this phenomena should be tolerated or that efforts to minimize it are pointless, but the dogma does)

Now compare this to the original topic. It was claimed that belief in God is stupid, and for stupid people.

However, almost every culture has some sort of concept of god(s). When people interact with god(s), something consistent is happening inside their experience. It is a real phenomena (like the Third Gender stuff is a real phenomena).

Christianity takes this phenomena and captures it inside a specific set of beliefs. God is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving. He sent his son to die for your sins. Blah, blah.

These beliefs form a dogma. However, the reality of the god-phenomena does not justify the god-dogma. And, when people argue against the belief in God, they argue against the specific dogmatic god-construct that exists in modern Christianity.

But Christian culture is built on the god-dogma. So, christians reject people that reject the dogma, and continue to accept the dogma in the face of critique.

This is a direct parallel to the Transgenderism dogma. That's what I'm arguing. Almost all smart people submit to dogmas.

The reason why smart people are suddenly rejecting the Christian dogma (after submitting to it for centuries) is that they are strongly incentivized to do so. And you can see that in how smart people are simply submitting to new dogmas, instead of now rejecting all dogmas.

The move away from Christiantity isn't a triumph over dogma, it's just a new religion taking hold.

[dragonwriter]

> I do agree, however, that the Christian church is predatory. It is matriarchal and is basically a system of domestication.

First, outside of the increasingly unrealized ecumenical aspirations of the various Christian Churches, there is no “the Christian Church” in the sense of a single human institution.

And virtually none of the various Christian Churches are matriarchal, they tend to be quite patriarchal, both internally and in the structure they advocate for broader society.