So. I'm a Atheist to Religious tranny. What drove my transition is the realization that I need a religion. This was the end process of scientific reasoning that I will never be able to become Vulcan-like. I decided that humans have a genetic (?) need for meta-narratives that allow them to determine right from wrong. Religions fit this need as do quasi-religions like Buddhism and Confucianism.
A lack meta-narrative leads people to adopt something that looks like one -- I think that Communism, Fascism and modern wokeism all fit this category.
I'm an engineer, so I think of systems as either stable or unstable. Traditional religions are stable -- they have benefitted their followers in a cultural evolution terms. Most of the new ones are unstable -- they cause great pain and suffering for adherents and those of us who are adjacent. Wokeism seems no different from the latter, unfortunately...
"Officially atheistic societies under communism killed God in the public square, only to see him reborn in personality cults, with dictators like Joseph Stalin and Kim Il Sung assuming an almost divine aura for their people. "
I'm reminded of the scene in the film "Europa Europa" in which "Comrade Stain" provides candies from heaven when God fails to.
"Nature abhors a vacuum, and the collapse of religion among white liberals in the past few decades has allowed their passions to be channeled in other directions."
Another popular religion among our mandarins is "Climate Change" f/k/qa Global Warming. This apocalypse does not derive from science. It comes from a religion, the faux pagan worship of Gaia, the earth goddess. She is angry and must be propitiated by the sacrifice of human babies. The white liberals who are votaries of this religion have chosen brown and black babies to be the victims of the rituals of "population control", "zero population growth" and "reproductive choice".
Why has this bizarre cult arisen among what are supposed to be our most intelligent and skeptical class?
First we must observe the collapse of Christian belief in this class.
They are all Marxists now, not industrial grade Stalinists, but cultural Marxists theorized by Adorno, and Gramisci, and the French lumpen-philosopes such as Foucault and Derrida. But, even those variants of Marxism revile revealed religion.
It also allows them to indulge their favorite passion -- Contempt for the unwashed masses of Americans -- the obese bitter clingers who inhabit fly-over country and cling to their guns and religion.
When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.
This quotation actually comes from page 211 of Émile Cammaerts' book "The Laughing Prophet: The Seven Virtues and G. K. Chesterton" (1937) in which he quotes Chesterton as having Father Brown say, in "The Oracle of the Dog" (1923): "It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense." Cammaerts then interposes his own analysis between further quotes from Father Brown: "'It's drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it's coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.' The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything: 'And a dog is an omen and a cat is a mystery.'" Note that the remark about believing in anything is outside the quotation marks — it is Cammaerts. Nigel Rees is credited with identifying this as the source of the misattribution, in a 1997 issue of First ThingsHaving chosen atheism does not mean that they believe nothing.
As Umberto Eco wrote: "G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.
"The "death of God", or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church ..."
The failure of prophecies of the Apocalypse does not invalidate the religion of Gaia anymore than the the failure of the Apocalypse to occur in the 1st Century C.E. (1 Thessalonians) invalidated Christianity. Such failures often cause the faithful to double down, not to give up.
What do you make of this survey which says "22% of atheists believe in at least one of four New Age beliefs, compared with 56% of agnostics". How does this fit into your overall analysis about atheism?
So. I'm a Atheist to Religious tranny. What drove my transition is the realization that I need a religion. This was the end process of scientific reasoning that I will never be able to become Vulcan-like. I decided that humans have a genetic (?) need for meta-narratives that allow them to determine right from wrong. Religions fit this need as do quasi-religions like Buddhism and Confucianism.
A lack meta-narrative leads people to adopt something that looks like one -- I think that Communism, Fascism and modern wokeism all fit this category.
I'm an engineer, so I think of systems as either stable or unstable. Traditional religions are stable -- they have benefitted their followers in a cultural evolution terms. Most of the new ones are unstable -- they cause great pain and suffering for adherents and those of us who are adjacent. Wokeism seems no different from the latter, unfortunately...
Mike Pence will Make America Pray Again! Viva EL MAPA!
"Officially atheistic societies under communism killed God in the public square, only to see him reborn in personality cults, with dictators like Joseph Stalin and Kim Il Sung assuming an almost divine aura for their people. "
I'm reminded of the scene in the film "Europa Europa" in which "Comrade Stain" provides candies from heaven when God fails to.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXxxX8DgS30
"Nature abhors a vacuum, and the collapse of religion among white liberals in the past few decades has allowed their passions to be channeled in other directions."
Another popular religion among our mandarins is "Climate Change" f/k/qa Global Warming. This apocalypse does not derive from science. It comes from a religion, the faux pagan worship of Gaia, the earth goddess. She is angry and must be propitiated by the sacrifice of human babies. The white liberals who are votaries of this religion have chosen brown and black babies to be the victims of the rituals of "population control", "zero population growth" and "reproductive choice".
Why has this bizarre cult arisen among what are supposed to be our most intelligent and skeptical class?
First we must observe the collapse of Christian belief in this class.
They are all Marxists now, not industrial grade Stalinists, but cultural Marxists theorized by Adorno, and Gramisci, and the French lumpen-philosopes such as Foucault and Derrida. But, even those variants of Marxism revile revealed religion.
It also allows them to indulge their favorite passion -- Contempt for the unwashed masses of Americans -- the obese bitter clingers who inhabit fly-over country and cling to their guns and religion.
When people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing — they believe in anything.
This quotation actually comes from page 211 of Émile Cammaerts' book "The Laughing Prophet: The Seven Virtues and G. K. Chesterton" (1937) in which he quotes Chesterton as having Father Brown say, in "The Oracle of the Dog" (1923): "It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense." Cammaerts then interposes his own analysis between further quotes from Father Brown: "'It's drowning all your old rationalism and scepticism, it's coming in like a sea; and the name of it is superstition.' The first effect of not believing in God is to believe in anything: 'And a dog is an omen and a cat is a mystery.'" Note that the remark about believing in anything is outside the quotation marks — it is Cammaerts. Nigel Rees is credited with identifying this as the source of the misattribution, in a 1997 issue of First ThingsHaving chosen atheism does not mean that they believe nothing.
As Umberto Eco wrote: "G K Chesterton is often credited with observing: "When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't believe in nothing. He believes in anything." Whoever said it - he was right. We are supposed to live in a sceptical age. In fact, we live in an age of outrageous credulity.
"The "death of God", or at least the dying of the Christian God, has been accompanied by the birth of a plethora of new idols. They have multiplied like bacteria on the corpse of the Christian Church ..."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3621313/God-isnt-big-enough-for-some-people.html
The failure of prophecies of the Apocalypse does not invalidate the religion of Gaia anymore than the the failure of the Apocalypse to occur in the 1st Century C.E. (1 Thessalonians) invalidated Christianity. Such failures often cause the faithful to double down, not to give up.
What do you make of this survey which says "22% of atheists believe in at least one of four New Age beliefs, compared with 56% of agnostics". How does this fit into your overall analysis about atheism?
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/01/new-age-beliefs-common-among-both-religious-and-nonreligious-americans/