(this would have been in my teens)
― aloha darkness my old friend (katherine), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:23 (five years ago) link
I suppose "believe and have a personal relationship with" is closer to the original meaning, as in, trust in god, some degree of selflessness
― ogmor, Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:25 (five years ago) link
[I imagine when we're dead we'll feel pretty much like we felt before we were born
hey this is MY line
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:28 (five years ago) link
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
― Mordy, Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:30 (five years ago) link
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
― Paleo Weltschmerz (El Tomboto), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:36 (five years ago) link
“is free will a thing” (almost definitely not)
argh the ILX poll on this question drove me *nuts* (and I agree w you, btw)
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:39 (five years ago) link
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
― ogmor, Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:44 (five years ago) link
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
― 🦅 (Trϵϵship), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:49 (five years ago) link
yeah, an imaginary thing
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:50 (five years ago) link
oh yeah this is the stuff
― Paleo Weltschmerz (El Tomboto), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:51 (five years ago) link
Free will’s fake but so what is how I break it down to an extent
― faculty w1fe (silby), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:52 (five years ago) link
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.
― Moves like Javert (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:53 (five years ago) link
People are weak but weak wills are still free wills
― 🦅 (Trϵϵship), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:54 (five years ago) link
Will Smith vs. Will Forte vs. Wil Wheaton FITE
― Moves like Javert (Ye Mad Puffin), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:55 (five years ago) link
Pure materialism runs so far against the grain of our phenomenological experience that it just becomes goofy
― 🦅 (Trϵϵship), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:58 (five years ago) link
yeah it's goofy! What good philosophical theory isn't goofy?
― faculty w1fe (silby), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:59 (five years ago) link
the one that posits a carrot has a soul
― the late great, Tuesday, 4 September 2018 21:59 (five years ago) link
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.
― faculty w1fe (silby), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 22:01 (five years ago) link
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.
― 🦅 (Trϵϵship), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 22:03 (five years ago) link
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.
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 4 September 2018 22:06 (five years ago) link
Oh yeah this is the stuff
― Paleo Weltschmerz (El Tomboto), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 22:11 (five years ago) link
free will is not a thing
― lee guacamole (darraghmac), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 22:11 (five years ago) link
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
― Mordy, Tuesday, 4 September 2018 22:12 (five years ago) link
Oh, I have no wish to excuse textual literalists :)
― Frederik B, Tuesday, 4 September 2018 22:13 (five years ago) link
lol dmac
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 4 September 2018 22:18 (five years ago) link
pi is 3
i appreciate this is marginally less useless than most surveys of religious belief but i think its worth thinking about to whom these are the distinctions that make a difference.
the idea that, say, all secular ppl will have more in common with each other than they will with certain theists is rubbish. esp given that ppls beliefs change and that its often quite subtle or minor shifts in overall worldview that wld move them up or down this scale, or at least, the differences are overstated.
and ofc, my favourite point for all discussions: a lot of ppl don't really know what they think. not just agnosticism; uncertainty and the inability to express these ideas are integral to all(?) religious traditions. ppl 'suddenly' changing their minds and so on, all manner of outside influences both at the individual and collective level.
― ogmor, Tuesday, 4 September 2018 22:19 (five years ago) link
the Pew Center isn't here for your shades of gray, they are here to generate a foundation of facts.
― Paleo Weltschmerz (El Tomboto), Tuesday, 4 September 2018 22:26 (five years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.
― System, Monday, 10 September 2018 00:01 (five years ago) link
I got solidly secular "along with 17% of the public" bloody hell. Are there really that few nonreligious people in the US? I feel like if you did this poll in my environs I'd be in around a 40% or more group.
― Stoop Crone (Trayce), Monday, 10 September 2018 01:34 (five years ago) link
"Religious Resister", which is horseshit if you aren't equating religion with Christianity as these fuckers appear to be.
― Three Word Username, Monday, 10 September 2018 10:02 (five years ago) link
Because Christianity is the only religious worth resisting?
I got solidly secular, as expected, though I'd say it's only 90% accurate.
― pomenitul, Monday, 10 September 2018 10:17 (five years ago) link
There needs to be an ‘aggressively atheist’ category, but it’s a pretty poorly constructed poll.
― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Monday, 10 September 2018 10:20 (five years ago) link
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…
― faculty w1fe (silby), Monday, 10 September 2018 13:14 (five years ago) link
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.
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Monday, 10 September 2018 13:21 (five years ago) link
Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.
― System, Tuesday, 11 September 2018 00:01 (five years ago) link
yawn
― faculty w1fe (silby), Tuesday, 11 September 2018 00:02 (five years ago) link
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?
― weird woman in a bar (La Lechera), Tuesday, 11 September 2018 00:38 (five years ago) link