Urwrongx1000 wrote:Gloominary wrote:There are some people who follow the ethical teachings of Jesus, Buddha or Mohammad and so on, but are either atheists, agnostics, deists, or believe in the miracle of divine inspiration, but not in other sorts of miracles (walking on water, turning water into wine, etcetera).
That's the Hypocrisy though and it goes both ways. Following the Ethos of a world religion or leader, is essentially 'Religion'. Again, superstition and supernatural details, are not necessary. You can claim "Jesus Christ is Lord and Savior" without believing in Divine Intervention, or specifically, defining the metaphorical interpretation of Divine Intervention, or what it means to be the son, or any relative, of any "god". Thus, what is God? What is a god? What is
any god? It already begs-the-question, which most people avoid, because they lack intelligence, knowledge, wisdom, etc. They rather defer to (moral, religious) authorities.
I don't consider them to be properly religious.
It's like a rock band without guitars/drums, they're missing a key component.
Superstition is for women and children, to translate higher Ethos to them, "moral lessons", etc.
While women may tend to be more superstitious than men, it's something most women, and men used to be.
Superstition is also just about irrational hopes and fears.
Gloominary wrote:What about classical liberalism, libertarianism, do you see it as a religion, and slave-dialectic?
Myself, I don't see slave-dialectic as necessarily a bad thing.
I think we need to find the right balance between the people and the elite, rather than extremes.
Classical liberalism = universal negative rights.
Modern liberalism = universal positive rights.
Both of them are religious, in a sense.
You said it yourself. Rights, from where, from whom, by what authority?
Yup, we make them up, for whatever reasons, for social control, cohesion, because they're emotionally appealing for some.
Some sorts of rights just resonate with some people.
People feel like they need an ethos to live by, that will help ensure positive outcomes for themselves and their group.
I'm not opposed to having some ethos, but I try to be novel and nuanced about it.
Gloominary wrote:A lot of classical liberals believe their rights come from God, or are Euclidean.
Modern liberals believe in a sort of original rich white male sin that's inherited, passed down from generation to generation.
Rich white men can partly atone for this sin by showing kindness and generosity to poor black and brown women, but they can never fully atone for the crimes of their ancestors and contemporary rich white male supremacists, until all inequality between groups and individuals is eliminated.
That's the Modern-Post-Modern 'race' conundrum, inserted into everything, especially religion. Isn't "God" a rich-white-male WASP?
For them, the devil is a rich WASP male.
Gloominary wrote:Religion can be defined between religious beliefs, and religious actions.
Right, well, modern liberals can be very religious in their ethos and behavior.
A minority of them are spiritual too.
Some of those new agers, like Marianne Williamson.
They talk a lot about Gaia, mother earth.
They talk a lot about positive and negative energy.
They say we need to heal the planet by getting off fossil fuels, treating the poor, women and indigenous peoples better, etcetera.
Wiccans and other New Age Pagans are usually quite embarrassing, by what they say. However so are Modern-Post-Modern Christians and other default religious peoples. There is "Maia" on this forum; she claims to be a wiccan and witch. She is just one example of many. Usually children and teenagers, want to "resurrect the dead", so to speak, concerning the superstitious and supernatural. People want more to believe in than real-life. Thus they seek-out ghosts, demons, angels, mystical creatures, foreign and fantasy lands, etc. Real-life is boring. Real-life is monotonous. No demons. No beasts. No after-life. Nothing. If there were a God then he is long-dead. Thus I characterize Pop Religions as dead-worshipers, death-worshipers.
Yea, that's a good way of putting it, they worship death, and what they believe follows it.
They also worship the strange and unusual, the paranormal.
Life doesn't always do it for them, they want something more, or something else.
The average "religious person", Christian for example, devotes him or herself to dead people from centuries and millenniums ago. It's like owing fealty to a long dead Monarch, or to Julius Caesar. Get over it. They want to live in the past, using rose-tinted goggles.
It's human nature, we have the capacity to self-delude, some more than others.
It's a narcotic, it can be a motivator too, it'll always be there in one form or another, so long as we're human.
The Old religions have still not updated to the New Era, the New Age, the New World Order. Secularism is only the first step toward what comes around the corner. Technology, AI, diseases, many aspects and dangers of common life are growing so fast and powerful, much of humanity will wake up, within this Century, and not even recognize the world around them. They will be passed-by, as new powers rise and overtake 'Humanity'.
There is no New World Religion or Order, yet, but the seeds are already sewn, as people seek religion and Nietzsche's Rebirth and transvaluation. When you can't believe in the Old Mythos, which is pretty much impossible at this point, then a new Mythos must take its place.
For example, look at how popular, yet controversial the Star Wars franchise has become. This is an example of that craving for Mythos. Or Star Trek, or Marvel Superhero movies, Avengers, etc.
Yup, for many secularists; celebrities, cinema, ideologies, scientism, self-help gurus, talking heads and the state have helped fill the void religion left behind.
Overt supernaturality isn't necessary to classical and modern, social liberalism, but both of them are sort of covertly supernatural, insofar as people take them to be anything more than social constructs.
Many of us have done away with the absolute lawgiver, but few with the absolute law, and duties, to oneself, one's family, friends, neighbors and so on have been replaced by rights.
I have a right to this, I have a right to that.
To freedom, says the libertarian, or to stuff, says the socialist, or to not having my feelings hurt, says the snowflake.
We can only speculate where we'll head from here.
Will there be a supernatural right-giver, like there used to be a supernatural duty-giver, and temples to this deity or deities?
Or will we do away with objective rights altogether, replace them with some other form of misobjectivity, one we can't even imagine now, or will we revert back to having objective duties?
Like I said delusion will always be there to some extent, but we can have more or less, only time will tell for sure, how they will mutate, and how delusional we'll become.
