Are you a Sunday Stalwart? Solidly Secular? Or somewhere in between? (Pew Research Center quiz)

Needs an option beyond "solidly secular" like "actively hostile to religion."

the thought of being conscious forever is much worse than death

it's not a great thought, particularly with the world getting worse and global warming being a thing that exists, but at least I can conceptualize what it will be like to be conscious for it

whereas it's not possible to conceptualize the alternative. "oh, it's like sleeping" -- we don't experience sleep, we experience waking up, which won't happen. we experience dreams, which also don't happen without a conscious mind.

There is no way all of this is just atoms smashing together

https://shaneraymond.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/mao-kundun1.jpg

Needs an option beyond "solidly secular" like "actively hostile to religion."

― Moves like Javert (Ye Mad Puffin), 4. september 2018 22:38 (fourteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I thought that was what 'Religion Resister' means? Which is the second worst opinion, btw, better than 'God-and-Country Believer' but slightly worse than 'Spiritually Awake'

under a christian framework that just means you are resisting the call of jesus christ to have a personal relationship with you or some shit like that

there's still religions other than Christianity, some of them are even quite popular~

And getting more popular all the time. Unlike Christianity.

not mine though. Anyway as I said in that thread linked above I'm religious but not spiritual.

well I almost never remember my dreams but even so, I'm keenly aware of my existence as the exception not the norm. I recognise how dependent and linked my consciousness is to what's going on around me, I am aware of it changing and I've seen it gradually decay in other people. I remember seeing death as this huge yawning oblivion but that seems nonsensically solipsistic to me now

sure, but as mentioned above this quiz is clearly devised under a Christian and specifically Protestant framework even as it makes token efforts to expand it beyond one

xp -- it's the opposite of solipsism. there is no self to conceive of anything. there is no "conceiving" because the bodily functions necessary to bring that about aren't happening about. to which the natural question is: so then what?

I imagine when we're dead we'll feel pretty much like we felt before we were born

iirc that wasn't so bad

solidly secular obv

xp i mean before we were conceived, not referring to sensations in the womb

the idea that ignorant literalism is the purest sort of religious faith should always be challenged

otm. maimonides points out something that should be obvious. do you know how we know the bible isn't literal? bc it talks about god's hands. god doesn't have hands bc he's not corporeal. so we know the bible talks in metaphor and therefore dot dot dot. ppl who are textual literalists are traditionally incoherent.

also i got sunday stalwart and like shakes i say fuck that sunday is a hero to most but doesn't mean

xp those conceptions predate me, I am just hosting them for a while

how do we know god doesnt have hands

a line I've heard from some p well-informed clergy is that belief as a sort of truth-claim is a fairly recent invention and is at least somewhat incommensurable with how 'believe' (& its equivs in other languages) was used back in the day (i.e. the "i believe in you" sense is older). i am inclined to believe something similar wrt sincerity but i cba looking into it

(xp) He has legs, according to Alan Partridge. Gas legs.

xxp well i do know christians have a problem w/ that idea too iirc

well Reb Yeshuah had hands, anyway

where I grew up the bar was not just "believe" the bar was "believe and have a personal relationship with." and supposedly if you just asked, the latter would happen. spoilers: I did ask, and it didn't happen

(this would have been in my teens)

I suppose "believe and have a personal relationship with" is closer to the original meaning, as in, trust in god, some degree of selflessness

[I imagine when we're dead we'll feel pretty much like we felt before we were born

hey this is MY line

xp in monotheistic religions that is imo absolutely colored with "have no other gods" - not sure about the role of "belief" in non-monotheistic faiths

Y’all explaining this quiz to each other and complaining about its obvious Christian bias? It’s a multiple choice test! Pick the best answer, not the right answer, is what I’m trying to say.

I’m solidly secular and kinda disappointed that it didn’t have follow-on questions like “is this all just atoms bouncing around” (yes) or “is free will a thing” (almost definitely not) because I bet less than 17% are with me there

“is free will a thing” (almost definitely not)

argh the ILX poll on this question drove me *nuts* (and I agree w you, btw)

xp yeah but there have been so many instances in which nominally monotheistic religions have been lax abt ppl worshipping, paying tribute to or otherwise focusing on particular subdivisions, incarnations etc. of god not to mention spirits of animals & ancestors, idols, saints and so on that i find the exclusivity claims hard to take too seriously

or “is free will a thing” (almost definitely not) because I bet less than 17% are with me there

― Paleo Weltschmerz (El Tomboto), Tuesday, September 4, 2018 5:36 PM (eleven minutes ago)

This is the worst. Free will is a thing

yeah, an imaginary thing

oh yeah this is the stuff

Free will’s fake but so what is how I break it down to an extent

I'm with Tombot, generally, but I hate the formulation of "just atoms." Atoms can be pretty amazing. I'm drinking some wine rn that I'm pretty sure is just a bunch of atoms, and it is really delicious.

Thing 1: I have no problem with imagining that nature (given eons of time and oceans of material) can come up with extraordinary things, up to and including me, Emmylou Harris, Curtis Mayfield, giant redwoods, and the 1982 St. Louis Cardinals.

Thing 2: But even if I HAD a problem imagining it, that wouldn't make any difference in terms of what is and is not true. The universe doesn't give a shit about whether people comprehend it or not.

If the ultimate nature of the universe is arrayed in a certain way - higher power or no - our ability to comprehend / imagine / believe it is pretty irrelevant in terms of its being that way. For all we know, the universe could all be run by sentient lint-balls that live in Wisconsin and crave Fanta. Unsurprisingly, I hold to a rather hardassed form of agnosticism.

People are weak but weak wills are still free wills

Will Smith vs. Will Forte vs. Wil Wheaton FITE

Pure materialism runs so far against the grain of our phenomenological experience that it just becomes goofy

yeah it's goofy! What good philosophical theory isn't goofy?

the one that posits a carrot has a soul

I used to me more of a hardcore materialist and hard determinist but lately I don't think those are that interesting; instead I spend all my time inveighing against all forms of consequentialist ethics.

Virtue ethics and deontological ethics are the ones I like, just don’t ask me to ground them. Existentialism is preferable to determinism because at least there is freedom in the void.

otm. maimonides points out something that should be obvious. do you know how we know the bible isn't literal? bc it talks about god's hands. god doesn't have hands bc he's not corporeal. so we know the bible talks in metaphor and therefore dot dot dot. ppl who are textual literalists are traditionally incoherent.

― Mordy, 4. september 2018 23:12 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Or it could be that different parts of the bible were written by different people, and it's not so much metaphorical as it is incoherent and contradictory.

Oh yeah this is the stuff

free will is not a thing

sike i chose to type that

xxxp textual literalists believe that the entire bible is coherent + true so i'm not that's as exculpatory as u imagine

NB the categories are just clusters of ppl who answered similarly to the questions in the survey that were induced by data+clustering method+chosen # of clusters. The names are post hoc and might as well be A, B, C…

I knew I was solidly secular before I took the quiz and that is the result I got. Very clear answers, no waffling at all. Easy.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

yawn

i feel pretty good about my result -- my mom literally raised me to believe that one could be a good and moral person and not belong to any religion. she is in her 70s now and i think is fairly radical for her generation in her commitment to secular values (my dad too but that's another story) solidly secular is how i would have described myself at any point in my life.

i think this is a fine result -- did anyone expect religious zeal?