In 1890, the [US] Supreme Court … ‘religion’ has reference to one’s views of his relations to his Creator, … In the 1960s, the Court expanded its view of religion … [to include] Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others.”
By "this norm" do you mean don't argue at dinner? Can you give more details about that not holding during the US revolution? My doubt comes from admittedly scant evidence: The reformation included wars between Protestant sects. People from multiple sects colonized America before the revolution. The territories of the original settlements grew closer together. I don't *remember* history of religious wars within America. The colonies managed to form a federation before the war. The first amendment was adopted pretty soon after the war. Is this mostly true but privately people valued or displayed tolerance less? I'm genuinely curious whether there's an general understanding of how the religious cease-fire of the West managed to happen.
Einstein produced ideas to try to explain other people's experimental results, and those ideas were then tested with further experiments. Until there was experimental results supporting Einsteins ideas they were just hypotheses - not conclusions. Until an idea's predictions are observed the idea is not scientifically validated, and science has not come to a conclusion about it. It's just the definition of what science is.
Agnosticism is the only scientific position about gods in general. You can think we are in simulation if you like, and then the creators of the sim are effectively the gods. That might sound more sciency and modern to you, but it's in the same family of ideas as most major religions since 1700 or so.
I disagree strongly with that last claim "actual science has no conclusions about things it hasn't experimented on yet"
Indeed, I would call Galileo's and Einstein's thought experiments the epitome of science (Galileo gave a great thought experiment disproving Aristotle's idea that heavy objects fell faster than light ones). I mean, sure, you could in a sense argue that there was some experimental evidence insofar as we have certain intuitions honed from evolution but that would render this claim mostly meaningless.
I'd argue that science simply requires a willingness to update on new evidence. But it's not automatically not science if you don't have it yet, e.g., physicists guessing at elegant theories for higher energies than have yet been tested.
They are just mangling something like the following argument:
Look, you atheists accuse us theists of being irrational for believing in all these various supernatural events without proof but take stock of your own position. You too take certain background assumptions for granted.
In other words the suggestion is: hey we aren't any different. We both start with some prior probability function it's just that my prior probability function puts a much higher prior on divine beings etc…
This argument is lacking in two ways.
1. While I assume there may be a smattering of theists who really do simply have a strong prior in the existence of some kind of divine being and then take that wherever it might lead 99% of theists don't do anything of the kind.
Go get them on their own and ask them to give various probability judgements and then note that those views don't update in the right ways when they find out how other members of their faith community believe.
2) Usually the criticism against theists (except some of the most juvenile childish name calling) is more about dogmatism than priors. I mean if you compare how members of a religious group respond to the incentives supposedly provided by the heaven/hell system (even on the verge of death) and those provided by a loan shark they clearly treat the heaven/hell rewards and punishments as far far less certain. But they behave dogmatically in that they insist they have full and complete confidence in these claims (or at least see their doubt as a failure). In other words they basically say: updating fuck that. Also, their moral conduct seems to conform itself to the behavior of other community members not the moral rules they claim to believe (though, tbf, we all really do that one).
That's true, and could I hypnotize either the federal or a state legislature to pass such a law it does seem like a good idea, but I was assuming it would be pretty hard to get enough support behind it until the social norm was established.
But I guess we seem to have gotten the legal protections for freedom or religion before we got the social norms so maybe the law first way is possible.
I agree procedural factors are key. Democracy as it is now is effectively government with the consent of the majotity. That sounds like probable tyrany by the majority, but in practice, because nearly everyone in the majority likes someone in the minority, it means quite a large super majority are treated reasonably well.
Also, it's procedurally difficult to incarcerate or otherwise punish large numbers of prople if each of them has a right to trial by jury, or even just a trial close in form to modern trials.
Due to these two factors I doubt that while democracy and or rule of law exists that things can get as bad as Europe in the 1600s. If it does get that bad it will have meant that democracy and rule of law have broken down. In which case, any ptocess or procedure you could have thought of could also have brocken down.
Thanks for that. I visited Japan a while back and of course as a tourist you have to visit lots of shrines and temples. It seemed to me that people could be both Shinto and Buddhist or just Shinto or just Buddist which I found strange. I wondered if some Japanese Christians were also Shinto, but never found out. It seems probably so.
I can't imagine many theists think atheists are scientific. They might think atheists just believe people who claim to be scienctific intead of dudes in flowing robes or something like that. But believing people who sound sciency is not scientific, it's just a religeous-like mindet with a different focus. Actual science has no conclusions about things it hasn't experimented on yet.
And yet, theists have been known to accuse atheists of having a "religious belief in science." (Are they actually complimenting us? Can't rule it out.)
First, I think this is a truly important point that's well said. However, I'm less concerned about getting official legal protection and more concerned with generating a corresponding social norm like we have regarding religious tolerance (you don't mock, insult etc… and you try not to bring it up over family dinner etc.. etc..).
So before we can create a legal norm what we need to do is expand these norms to these religious-like encompassing belief systems. The legal rights and simple decent treatment are all easier to achieve if you have positive conflict free interactions with other believers and are able to work besides them and come to empathize.
Unfortunately, people are *extremely* resistant to any suggestion that they treat 'enemy' groups as if they were a religion (that would make their abuse wrong and suggest that it was ok to believe in the enemy group like it's ok to have different religious belief). I'm curious where this norm came from in the religious case as it didn't seem to be present during the US revolution.
Not a suitable definition for courts; but I've always drawn the line of "religion" at "the point its acceptable to coerce others into agreeing with your beliefs." If you feel a thing important enough to try *forcing* someone to agree, or at least act as if they agree with you, then that is a religion grade opinion.
In fairness, this is a hard problem. Human societies can enforce their will on groups of individuals up to a point. Past that point we descend into various shades of collective misery. We only know this from the hard trials and errors of history: you can't get to 'we can't force everyone to follow this particular religion without war or massively oppressive totalitarianism' through logic from first principles - we only know this because we have tried and tried and failed and failed.
But those trials and errors haven't defined a precise point for us. It seems to me quite likely that the only way to find that line is through further trials and errors. Which is going to suck.
I asked for a definition that courts could enforce to achieve the function of preventing some religious like groups of using the power of the state against others, while still allowing the state to function in many ways. I didn't just ask for any definition; I had constraints.
Here's my first cut at a definition (you did ask, right?). It is based on my own experience, so is disputable in every regard, including the things it doesn't say.
Beliefs, not subject to empirical refutation, about a goal or purpose that applies to all humans and can supersede the desires of every human or group of humans.
By "this norm" do you mean don't argue at dinner? Can you give more details about that not holding during the US revolution? My doubt comes from admittedly scant evidence: The reformation included wars between Protestant sects. People from multiple sects colonized America before the revolution. The territories of the original settlements grew closer together. I don't *remember* history of religious wars within America. The colonies managed to form a federation before the war. The first amendment was adopted pretty soon after the war. Is this mostly true but privately people valued or displayed tolerance less? I'm genuinely curious whether there's an general understanding of how the religious cease-fire of the West managed to happen.
Einstein produced ideas to try to explain other people's experimental results, and those ideas were then tested with further experiments. Until there was experimental results supporting Einsteins ideas they were just hypotheses - not conclusions. Until an idea's predictions are observed the idea is not scientifically validated, and science has not come to a conclusion about it. It's just the definition of what science is.
Agnosticism is the only scientific position about gods in general. You can think we are in simulation if you like, and then the creators of the sim are effectively the gods. That might sound more sciency and modern to you, but it's in the same family of ideas as most major religions since 1700 or so.
I disagree strongly with that last claim "actual science has no conclusions about things it hasn't experimented on yet"
Indeed, I would call Galileo's and Einstein's thought experiments the epitome of science (Galileo gave a great thought experiment disproving Aristotle's idea that heavy objects fell faster than light ones). I mean, sure, you could in a sense argue that there was some experimental evidence insofar as we have certain intuitions honed from evolution but that would render this claim mostly meaningless.
I'd argue that science simply requires a willingness to update on new evidence. But it's not automatically not science if you don't have it yet, e.g., physicists guessing at elegant theories for higher energies than have yet been tested.
They are just mangling something like the following argument:
Look, you atheists accuse us theists of being irrational for believing in all these various supernatural events without proof but take stock of your own position. You too take certain background assumptions for granted.
In other words the suggestion is: hey we aren't any different. We both start with some prior probability function it's just that my prior probability function puts a much higher prior on divine beings etc…
This argument is lacking in two ways.
1. While I assume there may be a smattering of theists who really do simply have a strong prior in the existence of some kind of divine being and then take that wherever it might lead 99% of theists don't do anything of the kind.
Go get them on their own and ask them to give various probability judgements and then note that those views don't update in the right ways when they find out how other members of their faith community believe.
2) Usually the criticism against theists (except some of the most juvenile childish name calling) is more about dogmatism than priors. I mean if you compare how members of a religious group respond to the incentives supposedly provided by the heaven/hell system (even on the verge of death) and those provided by a loan shark they clearly treat the heaven/hell rewards and punishments as far far less certain. But they behave dogmatically in that they insist they have full and complete confidence in these claims (or at least see their doubt as a failure). In other words they basically say: updating fuck that. Also, their moral conduct seems to conform itself to the behavior of other community members not the moral rules they claim to believe (though, tbf, we all really do that one).
That's true, and could I hypnotize either the federal or a state legislature to pass such a law it does seem like a good idea, but I was assuming it would be pretty hard to get enough support behind it until the social norm was established.
But I guess we seem to have gotten the legal protections for freedom or religion before we got the social norms so maybe the law first way is possible.
I agree procedural factors are key. Democracy as it is now is effectively government with the consent of the majotity. That sounds like probable tyrany by the majority, but in practice, because nearly everyone in the majority likes someone in the minority, it means quite a large super majority are treated reasonably well.
Also, it's procedurally difficult to incarcerate or otherwise punish large numbers of prople if each of them has a right to trial by jury, or even just a trial close in form to modern trials.
Due to these two factors I doubt that while democracy and or rule of law exists that things can get as bad as Europe in the 1600s. If it does get that bad it will have meant that democracy and rule of law have broken down. In which case, any ptocess or procedure you could have thought of could also have brocken down.
Thanks for that. I visited Japan a while back and of course as a tourist you have to visit lots of shrines and temples. It seemed to me that people could be both Shinto and Buddhist or just Shinto or just Buddist which I found strange. I wondered if some Japanese Christians were also Shinto, but never found out. It seems probably so.
I can't imagine many theists think atheists are scientific. They might think atheists just believe people who claim to be scienctific intead of dudes in flowing robes or something like that. But believing people who sound sciency is not scientific, it's just a religeous-like mindet with a different focus. Actual science has no conclusions about things it hasn't experimented on yet.
A formal law would go a long way toward showing widespread support for such a non-legal norm.
And yet, theists have been known to accuse atheists of having a "religious belief in science." (Are they actually complimenting us? Can't rule it out.)
First, I think this is a truly important point that's well said. However, I'm less concerned about getting official legal protection and more concerned with generating a corresponding social norm like we have regarding religious tolerance (you don't mock, insult etc… and you try not to bring it up over family dinner etc.. etc..).
So before we can create a legal norm what we need to do is expand these norms to these religious-like encompassing belief systems. The legal rights and simple decent treatment are all easier to achieve if you have positive conflict free interactions with other believers and are able to work besides them and come to empathize.
Unfortunately, people are *extremely* resistant to any suggestion that they treat 'enemy' groups as if they were a religion (that would make their abuse wrong and suggest that it was ok to believe in the enemy group like it's ok to have different religious belief). I'm curious where this norm came from in the religious case as it didn't seem to be present during the US revolution.
Not a suitable definition for courts; but I've always drawn the line of "religion" at "the point its acceptable to coerce others into agreeing with your beliefs." If you feel a thing important enough to try *forcing* someone to agree, or at least act as if they agree with you, then that is a religion grade opinion.
In fairness, this is a hard problem. Human societies can enforce their will on groups of individuals up to a point. Past that point we descend into various shades of collective misery. We only know this from the hard trials and errors of history: you can't get to 'we can't force everyone to follow this particular religion without war or massively oppressive totalitarianism' through logic from first principles - we only know this because we have tried and tried and failed and failed.
But those trials and errors haven't defined a precise point for us. It seems to me quite likely that the only way to find that line is through further trials and errors. Which is going to suck.
I asked for a definition that courts could enforce to achieve the function of preventing some religious like groups of using the power of the state against others, while still allowing the state to function in many ways. I didn't just ask for any definition; I had constraints.
Here's my first cut at a definition (you did ask, right?). It is based on my own experience, so is disputable in every regard, including the things it doesn't say.
Beliefs, not subject to empirical refutation, about a goal or purpose that applies to all humans and can supersede the desires of every human or group of humans.
Interesting story.