[cooper_ganglia]

Reading this, it struck me how the dynamics of the current 'cancel culture' or whatever resemble those of the traditional religious institutions Dawkins has previously critiqued. Both, at their extremes, exhibit an intolerance to differing viewpoints as a threat to their literal existence. Both can become insular, shutting out any deviation from the 'accepted' narrative, and this poses a real threat to free thought and inquiry.

[crazydoggers]

It is ironic, and sad that this was so quickly flagged.

It may be that, given something like 80-90% of humans on earth follow such religious institutions, we as a species have some genetic factors that make us intolerant of differing viewpoints. I can imagine such genetic factors could have played a role in social cohesion early in human evolution.

[wheresmyshadow]

You're completely right, this couldn't be any more ironic. Article on how people can't debate got flagged with lots of comments proving the point, ah...

[fallingknife]

Just had an idea. The power of a flagging should be scaled by the inverse of how often the flagging user uses flags.

[system7rocks]

I'd love to engage with others about this. Richard Dawkins has not done himself any favors as being open to this conversation. There is so much to learn and appreciate about the diversity within humanity, including the concept of sexuality and gender. That would be a great conversation, and yet Dawkins and others just complain but don't open it up.

[stakhanov]

Jordan Peterson has some interesting thoughts on how the psychology behind environmentalism, wokism, social justice warriordom etc. has a lot of overlap with the psychology behind religion. And when he says that, that's not a shallow dismissal of something he disapproves of, because he's actually pro-religion.

The problem is the fact that people who hold these viewpoints see religious people as their enemy, so they're weirdly blind to how they themselves are religious. And it's a young and immature religion that hasn't yet been through the formative historical chapter of the Spanish Inquisition, the witch hunts etc., and the reckoning that followed. History will repeat itself.

[crazydoggers]

> The problem is the fact that people who hold these viewpoints see religious people as their enemy, so they're weirdly blind to how they themselves are religious.

It’s a fascinating realization. It reminds me of the religious history of the Soviet Union. The Soviets attempted to “delete” religion, which instead of creating a rational secular society, instead pushed people into pseudoscience, occultism and superstition.

It may be that in a culture pushed away from orthodox religions, due in many cases to those religions often actually engaging in hate against certain groups, a kind of replacement religious system takes hold.

[stakhanov]

Yeah, it's weird how this particular social transformation has no sticking power and instead produces oscillations. Coming at it from the Christian perspective (since it's the only religion that I know anything about): Jesus himself is portrayed in the New Testament as a rebel against the religious orthodoxy at the time. This resulted in a religion which, itself, eventually turned into an orthodoxy worth opposing. And now, secular opposition to that orthodoxy is weirdly turning into an orthodoxy of its own.

[operatingthetan]

>The problem is the fact that people who hold these viewpoints see religious people as their enemy, so they're weirdly blind to how they themselves are religious. And it's a young and immature religion that hasn't yet been through the formative historical chapter of the Spanish Inquisition, the witch hunts etc., and the reckoning that followed. History will repeat itself.

First this requires accepting an inaccurate definition of what a religion is, in other words you are mischaracterizing others beliefs. Second it seems like you are shooting your own religious position in the foot by dismissing your opponent's view 'just religion' as well. The rest is condescension.

[blubbity]

How do you define religion? Is Shinto a religion? What about Confucianism? Do you believe that religions need a centralized governing body? Do religions require community? What is an accurate definition of religion that isn’t immediately fraught with counter-examples?

[operatingthetan]

Neither of your examples are even close to being as abstract as 'wokeism.' At least those examples demonstrate something that could go either way, versus something that is clearly defined. E.g. Toyota Tacoma lovers are not a religion, Christianity is. You're pretty close to a 'what do words mean anyway?' type argument which I would struggle to classify as good faith.

It is odd that the only people I've ever encountered who thought secularists were religious were Christians though. A contradiction if you actually believe in definitions.

[stakhanov]

> Second it seems like you are shooting your own religious position in the foot by dismissing your opponent's view 'just religion' as well.

I have a ton of respect for religion, so when I characterize environmentalism, wokeism, and social justice warriordom as sharing characteristics with religion, that's actually not being dismissive at all, but quite the contrary. It implies that the respect I have for religion extends also to those belief systems. -- It strikes me as an internal contradiction that you characterize my position as religious, but also characterize it as a dismissal if I point out that my opponent's position shares characteristics with religion.

It seems, the only thing in what I wrote that could have given offence is that I picked those specific words in the first place. This is similar to how, when you pick the word "terrorist" over "freedom fighter", you've already identified yourself with the political camp that opposes them.

Interestingly, I chose those words precisely because I thought they had greater specificity than alternatives that came to mind (like "liberal" or "left").

I also think it's quite interesting that you seem to think that a concept like "Christian" is specific, while "wokeism" is not. After all the spectrum of different Christian beliefs, number of different social groupings underneath the Christian umbrella, and internal heterogeneity of beliefs within those groups is so great, that, literally, wars have been fought over that.

Another reason I picked those words was because I sincerely don't want to oppose "the left". In fact, the political grouping that historically most closely resembled the beliefs I still hold was the political left in Europe, prior to the financial crisis of 2008. With the tectonic shifts in the political landscape since then, and the likelihood that Americans would misunderstand what I mean by "left", I wanted to avoid that word.

[blubbity]

I apologize for not coming across as being in good faith. I’m just saying that religion takes many varied forms, and it might be within the realm of possibility to use duck typing when thinking about them.

My original point still stands though, not as a matter of combating your viewpoint, but just as an observation, that I bet even the most seemingly iron-clad definition of religion will still have lots of weird and unexpected edge cases.

[friend_and_foe]

The author of the article that you're discussing in this thread is a counterexample to the only people you've encountered who think secularists were religious (as am I). The man is one of the top 3 candidates for the quintessential secularist.

Toyota Tacoma lovers aren't a religion, we agree on that. What about believing that you must kill a sizeable portion of the human population to save the mother earth? Could that be characterized as a religious view? Why or why not? What about the idea that a man can be a woman if he wills it so, and that those who don't agree are ~~blasphemers~~ bigots? Could that be characterized as a religious view? Why or why not?

In addition, what do these two statements have to do with secularism?

100%, in good faith I'm asking you these questions and hoping for a clear and honest answer. You have a genuine opportunity to change my mind on this topic.

[nvm0n2]

What definition do you use? I don't think people arguing woke = religion are necessarily deriving that conclusion from a rigorous first-principles definition of religion. It's more like a collection of observations that sum up to a suspicion:

1. Woke people think that white people are born into sin due to the deeds of their ancestors, which is the doctrine of original sin.

2. This sin can be cleansed by becoming an "ally", "doing the work" etc, this is a bit like conversion.

3. Related: this notion that people are born pure and it's police/law (society) that corrupts them, so if you get rid of the police then crime will go away, this is like the Christian teaching of the Fall.

4. Trans stuff is an assertion that people have a sort of (gendered) soul distinct from their body.

5. The obsession with the virtue of minorities is similar to the story of the Good Samaritan and how Christian's are supposed to valorize the meek and the mild.

and so on. There's more of these especially when you get into their actions and not just beliefs, which yeah, do start to resemble Spanish Inquisition albeit with less physical torture thank goodness. So it's a walks like a duck quacks like a duck argument.

[flir]

I think the people saying "religion" actually mean "belief system" (philosophy, religion, political ideology, economic system, scientific paradigm) but they don't have the right language so they're reaching for "religion" as the most obvious example of a belief system. It's just woolly language hiding a very obvious observation: people tend to adopt cohesive ideological packages rather than assembling personalized belief systems à la carte.

For example there's no particular reason why "pro-choice" and "climate change" should be bundled together (if anything you'd expect conservatives to be the ones trying to conserve the environment, and progressives to be the ones trying to tarmac the planet) but they have a pretty strong correlation in US politics.

[nvm0n2]

It's more precise than that. Pro-choice/climate being bundled together is just the ordinary left/right (or non-left) divide, nothing special there. Progressives see motherhood as conservative-coded and anti-feminist, so control over that to be progress, they also assume anything academics say must be true because they're fellow progressives and "scientists" who thus personify Progress itself.

But the people talking about religion mean something more than just an arbitrary ideological package, they mean it has specific elements that are surprisingly close to the beliefs found in Christianity, rebranded. Like the elements in my list.

[Anon_Forever]

>First this requires accepting an inaccurate definition of what a religion is

Not at all, it's a scarily accurate definition. There's a new church of the "woke", complete with scripture, high priestesses, and orthodoxy:

https://www.devever.net/~hl/newchurch

[maegul]

I share similar feelings.

<armchair anthropology time>

I recall a recent genetics study[1] concluding that the homo sapiens (or direct ancestor) population bottle neck was ~1000 people for about 100,000 years.

My mind immediately wondered whether that length of time was long enough for some evolution to occur that reflected those conditions. Surely that world was insular for the people/hominids and extreme enough that survival was at the forefront of nearly all behaviours and social phenomena.

If any of that rubbed off on our genetics and all of human evolution and history since has not provided any sufficient forces to alter those traits, then it stands to reason our psychology is somewhat hard wired for catastrophic/post-apocalyptic in-group survival defensiveness/aggressiveness beyond even our animal/primate cousins.

All of that rests however on what time periods are required for evolutionary changes. My vague memory of studying a tiny bit of population genetics is that big changes can happen pretty quickly if there are factors capable of altering the size of the population substantially and that persist for a few generations.

</>

Otherwise, yea ... seems pretty obvious to me that our world (global society) and its complexity is very much a "reach exceeding grasp" scenario for our species.

Generally, I suspect greater stability and prosperity is rather possible but would require a drastic change in what we prioritise in our education and upbringing, where I would guess that we have a fundamental choice between what is compartmentalised or distributed in the way of social thinking, processing and decision making. It seems to me we've de-prioritised the average ability of the population to effectively participate and understand broad social and economic issues and decisions, and, are instead emphasising specialised/compartmentalised economic roles.

Naively, I would propose that investing in more distributed social/economic understanding would be better for society at large, which has arguably taken place with modern wealthy western civilisation. But, in line with my armchair anthropology above, I wouldn't be at all surprised if plugging more humans into the broad social issues of the day, however good attempts at their education etc have been, will naturally lead to tumult and division that is inevitably irrational and driven by inapt or misaligned psychological drives.

Going sci-fi on this ... it's curious to think about whether the "great filter" may simply be whether a species evolves intelligence etc by following only a narrow, and therefore unlikely, set of evolutionary paths or biological/geological histories that confer the required innate traits for being able to scale up to larger and well coordinated civilisations. Like, could the ice age dynamic of our planet have limited the possible evolutionary paths a species could take to those which make population scaling difficult and unproductive?

[1]: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abq7487