Religion in future conworlds

[zompist]

I think the root of the problem here is our insistence on using the word ‘religion’. Simply by using this word we imply that there is a clear distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘non-religion’. That works well enough for Christianity (especially Protestantism), and to some extent for Islam and Judaism, but the further out you go, the fuzzier the distinction gets. [...]

For these reasons I don’t feel particularly comfortable with the word ‘religion’. If we try to give it any firm definition we end up drawing arbitrary lines between similar things, so we might as well not bother trying.

I think you have to put your linguist hat on... this is how words work, with very messy boundaries, and yet we communicate just fine. Well, fine-ish.

In science and tech you can define words with strict formulas, but ordinary words don't work like that and it's not helpful to try. Academics love to start a book by "defining religion" or whatever their subject is; they come up with some ad hoc nonsense and everyone forgets it in chapter 2.

You can't really improve on Wittgenstein here: ordinary words are like "game", they are sets of family resemblances, which cluster together but which need not all be present.

Now, a lot of words are defined by prototypes, which is fine for many purposes, but not if you want to study things. If your prototype of "bird" is a robin or a sparrow, that will do until you run into penguins or emus. For many Westerners the prototype for religion is Christianity, and that becomes un-helpful for pretty much everything besides Christianity. It's not impossible to use the word, but you have to broaden your experience and not take Christianity as the norm.

[bradrn]

I think the root of the problem here is our insistence on using the word ‘religion’. Simply by using this word we imply that there is a clear distinction between ‘religion’ and ‘non-religion’. That works well enough for Christianity (especially Protestantism), and to some extent for Islam and Judaism, but the further out you go, the fuzzier the distinction gets. [...]

For these reasons I don’t feel particularly comfortable with the word ‘religion’. If we try to give it any firm definition we end up drawing arbitrary lines between similar things, so we might as well not bother trying.

I think you have to put your linguist hat on... this is how words work, with very messy boundaries, and yet we communicate just fine. Well, fine-ish.

Yeah, I know. Usually it is ‘just fine’: I would hardly avoid the word in, say, a casual conversation with friends.

But the problem is, it depends on context, and that’s where the ’-ish’ comes in. If we’re trying to have a conversation about ‘religion in future conworlds’, and it gets derailed by disputes about what ‘religion’ is… probably it’s a good idea to remember how fuzzy the idea really is, such that both you and malloc can be correct at the same time. (Avoiding the word entirely also works as a pre-emptive strategy, but it’s too late for that now.)

[Raphael]

Well, I'd say in practise, we need the word "religion" as, at least, a legal term, so that we can make use of such concepts as "freedom of religion".

[Raphael]

Some more thoughts on this discussion so far:

The discussion that later was turned into this thread started with malloc wondering whether it's plausible to have religion in a prominent role in a future scenario, because supposedly, the more science advances, the more "obsolete" religion should become.

Then we had a few rounds of back-and-forth between various people about whether religion is really less, or more, valid than science or philosophy, or even all that different, in a fundamental way, from philosophy, and to some extent, about the pros and cons of religion, and about how much sense the term "religion" makes sense in the first place.

But I'd say that much of this discussion, as interesting as it may be, doesn't really matter much for the initial question, because how valid or invalid something is doesn't tell us much about how human beings will react to it.

That is, even if we assume for a moment, just for the sake of argument, that everything the most militant of militant atheists say about religion is true, that still wouldn't mean, in any way, that religion is doomed to extinction or irrelevance in the future. Human beings can often be very messed up, so even if religion really is inherently very messed up, that doesn't mean that human beings will eventually turn against it.

[Travis B.]

Most of these religions have no deep interest in being "right." That is, what you're atheist about is Christianity in particular. Which is fine, but "Christianity" is not the same as "religion."

I get that classical religions often engaged in things such as interpretatio graeca and ancient peoples often identified pantheons with peoples, identified other people's gods with their own gods, and saw them as intercompatible. You still see this today with things such as the multitude of Hindu sects and how Buddhism coexists with Daoism, Shintoism, and Chinese folk religion. You also see things such as how Jews make no claim to Judaism being universal in any fashion. Yet at the same time, all of these make claims about the world and the universe which are at some level or another incompatible, so they can't all be "right", even if some of these coexist.

The same can be said about philosophies, or politics, or fandoms. Are the Cubs more worthy of support than the Mets, is Chicago pizza better than New York pizza? Are you quite sure that a preference for Odin over Zeus, or Shiva over Vishnu, is more of a "claim about the world" than these?

A believer in Odin is more likely to believe that the world is atop Yggrasil than a believer in Zeus, who would believe in no such world-tree, and conversely a believer in Zeus is more likely to place a special significance on Mount Olympus than a believer in Odin, for whom it would be just another mountain.

You rightly note that religions are not viewed as separate things in East Asia. It'd be more accurate though to say that ordinary people think and act that way... if you're an actual Buddhist priest you are not likely to also be a Daoist priest.

It depends; for centuries Buddhism and Shintoism in Japan were highly syncretistic (e.g. there would be temples that had both Buddhist and Shinto shrines on their grounds), and the idea that they were really separate was an innovation brought about by Japanese nationalism encouraged by the Meiji restoration.

Disagreements may be important (i.e. different from convictions about pizza) without really being resolvable. Centrists, liberals, progressives, and communists "can't all be 'right'", and yet all might agree on electing Kamala Harris.

At the same time, there are disagreements which are fundamental and which cannot be overlooked, such as whether Muhammad is the final prophet.

one still has to choose beliefs to believe in if one does not have any religious beliefs,

This strikes me as another "atheist-reacting-to-Christianity" belief. Because Christianity is a proselytizing religion which puts great emphasis on conversion and changing people's beliefs, so do Christian-derived atheisms. Both Christians and atheists are apt to go on and on about how they became such through some personal process.

But surely only a fraction of people are, so to speak, in the market for a new belief system. In fact one of the advantages of a belief system (I'm borrowing this idea from Marvin Minsky) is that it settles such futile questions, freeing a person up to do something more useful.

BTW, I miswrote what I said; what I meant was that one still has to choose beliefs if one does not have no religious beliefs.

To me, about "futile questions", that to me sounds like some people cannot accept that some things either have answers that cannot be known, or do not have answers in the first place. I get that many people want to have some kind of answer, but that mean choosing that some answers are right and some answers, necessarily, are not right.

Personally, while I am an atheist, I have no way of claiming that there isn't a Christian god, or a Zeus, or an Odin, or a Shiva, or a Vishnu, or so on; these are things that are intrinsically unknowable. Hence for me the best choice is to not choose. Some would call me an agnostic as a result, and to be precise I identify as an agnostic atheist, because I believe that any god or gods are unknowable, and I have seen nothing that would make me believe in any particular god or gods, and I refuse to believe in any of them for this exact reason.

And yes, one may believe in certain beliefs because they are traditionally associated with one's ethnoreligious group, but that is still a choice.

Not as interesting a one as is often thought, though. Many people are atheists because their parents or other influences are. And many are atheists because of a very predictable reaction against those people being Christians!

One could argue that I am an atheist because my parents are atheists. They raised me free of religion, but at the same time never told me to not believe in any religion (and indeed as a teenager my sister would go to church on Sundays with one of her friends). They only told me they were atheists when I was an adult, but at the same time I knew my family was not religious growing up without them telling me. I myself only realized I was an atheist in middle school, even though as early as elementary school I always felt weird about things like how kids would come into school with ash crosses on the foreheads on Ash Wednesday and I did not.

Conversely, my mother is an atheist specifically because she was raised in Catholicism, and rejected it. There is a clear contrast between me and my mother in this regard; my mother specifically opposes religion and Catholicism in particular (aside from celebrating Christmas and Easter in their secularized forms), while I frankly don't care about what other people choose to believe or not believe, as long as they don't impose their beliefs on others.

[zompist]

But I'd say that much of this discussion, as interesting as it may be, doesn't really matter much for the initial question, because how valid or invalid something is doesn't tell us much about how human beings will react to it.

That is, even if we assume for a moment, just for the sake of argument, that everything the most militant of militant atheists say about religion is true, that still wouldn't mean, in any way, that religion is doomed to extinction or irrelevance in the future. Human beings can often be very messed up, so even if religion really is inherently very messed up, that doesn't mean that human beings will eventually turn against it.

All very true. The idea that time brings progress is looking very shaky. (You can trace this pessimism looking at sf. It's hard today to find an sf novel that doesn't assume Late Capitalism Only Worse, Forever.)

All we know of high tech societies is the last two or three centuries. These give us some rather contradictory trends.

1. Religion has declined enormously in Europe and the former communist states.
2. On the other hand, it was largely replaced in those same areas, for a time, by all-encompassing political systems— fascism and communism. You can argue that Stalinism or Maoism were not religions, but one could also argue that they are modernizations of religion.
3. Religion has survived just fine in the US.
4. Religion is far stronger in India and the Muslim world today than it was in, say, 1960.

I'd also add that the Western world was embroiled in religious wars in the 1600s, then spent about two centuries in a rationalist revolt against (mostly) Catholicism. You get echoes of this in the Marxist hostility to religion, and in French laïcité, and some combination of all this probably gave malloc the idea that religions are "obsolete."

Finally, if we're talking about the far future, we shouldn't forget that religions change, even when both believers and nonbelievers are invested in thinking they don't.

[Travis B.]

I'd also add that the Western world was embroiled in religious wars in the 1600s, then spent about two centuries in a rationalist revolt against (mostly) Catholicism. You get echoes of this in the Marxist hostility to religion, and in French laïcité, and some combination of all this probably gave malloc the idea that religions are "obsolete."

Finally, if we're talking about the far future, we shouldn't forget that religions change, even when both believers and nonbelievers are invested in thinking they don't.

I have heard that the decline of religion in non-post-Communist Europe is in many ways a long-term echo of the days in which religion was a matter of state, while the survival of religion in the United States is in many ways a consequence of the fact that, occasional attempts by the right to legislate stuff like the Ten Commandments aside, religion has not been endorsed by the state, and hence different religious groups have had to provide higher-quality religion to compete with other religious groups for followers, and it is this higher-quality religion that has ensured the long-term survival of religion here.

[Raphael]

I have heard that the decline of religion in non-post-Communist Europe is in many ways a long-term echo of the days in which religion was a matter of state, while the survival of religion in the United States is in many ways a consequence of the fact that, occasional attempts by the right to legislate stuff like the Ten Commandments aside, religion has not been endorsed by the state, and hence different religious groups have had to provide higher-quality religion to compete with other religious groups for followers, and it is this higher-quality religion that has ensured the long-term survival of religion here.

Maybe, but that still makes it sound a bit as if the USA are the outlier here. In global terms, it looks more like the group of countries that you might describe as "the Western World minus the USA and Israel" is the outlier by being so relatively secular.

[rotting bones]

Quick notes:

Regarding religion vs. philosophy, both usually have a vested interest in being right in some sense. The difference is that philosophers are more interested in reasoning through arguments, while the faithful are interested in shallow affirmations that cement a community.

Regarding religion becoming obsolete, what's more likely is that older religions will become obsolete, giving way to novel doctrines. The most flexible religions might survive by letting novel doctrines into their sancta sanctorum.

Personally, I don't like religion for two reasons: 1. The same reason I don't like alcohol: Both harm one's reasoning faculties. Neither is a devastating tragedy in the long term since humans aren't intelligent to begin with. 2. Religion promotes cultural conservatism. Almost all of today's elites promote either cultural conservatism or cultural regress. This platform screws up my life while the elites enjoy their freedom shielded by a wall of money. If the feminists get to call out the Marxists for not doing enough for women, then my complaints are also justified.

Regarding progress, people might be surprised to learn that Marx didn't believe in progress as such. He believed that societies continuously regress in the short term until they break. The disruption is followed by short bursts of revolutionary "progress" in a pure adaptive and decidedly amoral sense. The revolution is succeeded by slow regress all over again. This Marxist disbelief in gradualism is precisely what the liberal doctrine of progress opposes. Every time the capitalists make our life shittier, they prove Marx right.

Regarding the usage of words, I don't think Wittgenstein would put it into these terms, but Marxists point out that meaning tends to split along lines of power. For example, liberal justices argue for harm reduction while conservative justices claim to support textualism when doing so would harm the poor. Marxists call this "class struggle".

I have long suspected that religion means something different for the rich than it does for the poor. People don't see it because both groups use the same words. For example, see how white evangelicals skew Republican while black evangelicals skew Democrat.

I suspect the rich experience the church as the poor submitting to their rule. The go to church because it comforts them to see an army under their command. Meanwhile, the poor who haven't been brainwashed go to church to find a community with which to share their sorrows and for a mutual aid society to share worldly possessions.

If religion serves these purposes, the ideology of the religion only needs to be inspiring. If later developments make the ideology embarrassing, it can be replaced with new dogmas without changing the structure of the institution. People are always offering up newer ideologies for this purpose. For example, the alt right esotericist Jorjani has been writing book after book on his neo-Zoroastrian doctrine called Prometheism.

I don't think Jorjani's approach will work. For a new religion to take root, it needs to inspire more poetry than what it's replacing. Jorjani doesn't understand "class struggle", i.e. those at the top of society compete against each other while those at the bottom compete against those at the top. He keeps saying things like: kill the 99% to save the 1% of Faustian Futurists or whatever. A religion can totally do that as long as it phrases it in an inspiring way. The inspiration is what has been missing in these new attempts. This is why left-Nietzscheans argue that fascists are Nietzsche's Last Man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RYEqAki7Zg Fascists have given in to despair and are no longer capable of joyfully creating new values. Their self-affirmation only takes the form of destruction. (I would question whether Nietzsche is an exception to this critique.)

[zompist]

I have long suspected that religion means something different for the rich than it does for the poor. People don't see it because both groups use the same words. For example, see how white evangelicals skew Republican while black evangelicals skew Democrat.

I suspect the rich experience the church as the poor submitting to their rule. The go to church because it comforts them to see an army under their command. Meanwhile, the poor who haven't been brainwashed go to church to find a community with which to share their sorrows and for a mutual aid society to share worldly possessions.

I agree with this... the rich and poor often have different religions, or if they are nominally the same, entirely different interpretations.

[xxx]

I don't think we can sincerely see two religions,
but a struggle between religion and individuals
which is that between altruism which is the greatest strength of the species
and selfishness which is the greatest strength of individual genes...

[rotting bones]

If every sacrifice equally benefited the masters and the slaves, then the perspective of the rich, that there is only one body politic, would be true. But we all know that's not the case.

Not that I'd ever expect a human to affirm a fact, mind you.

[keenir]

At the same time, there are disagreements which are fundamental and which cannot be overlooked, such as whether Muhammad is the final prophet.

eh, I'd've certainly thought so...but that was before I asked various Sikhs for their opinion - and some say Yes, and some say No.

Maybe, but that still makes it sound a bit as if the USA are the outlier here. In global terms, it looks more like the group of countries that you might describe as "the Western World minus the USA and Israel" is the outlier by being so relatively secular.

I'd like to be sure I'm on the same page as you...I always assumed that "the Western World" includes all those countries which used to be colonies of Western nations. Does your statement include those in the "relatively secular" view?

thank you for clarifying.

Personally, while I am an atheist, I have no way of claiming that there isn't a Christian god, or a Zeus, or an Odin, or a Shiva, or a Vishnu, or so on; these are things that are intrinsically unknowable. Hence for me the best choice is to not choose. Some would call me an agnostic as a result, and to be precise I identify as an agnostic atheist, because I believe that any god or gods are unknowable,

That sounds like, I think, Stoicism - the gods don't involve themselves.

And yes, one may believe in certain beliefs because they are traditionally associated with one's ethnoreligious group, but that is still a choice.

Not as interesting a one as is often thought, though. Many people are atheists because their parents or other influences are. And many are atheists because of a very predictable reaction against those people being Christians!

One could argue that I am an atheist because my parents are atheists. They raised me free of religion, but at the same time never told me to not believe in any religion (and indeed as a teenager my sister would go to church on Sundays with one of her friends). They only told me they were atheists when I was an adult, but at the same time I knew my family was not religious growing up without them telling me.

To me, that seems like it could've been very confusing at times -- and I imagine that they didn't really need to tell you not to believe in any religion, not when they were raising you free of religion, keeping you from any religious practices that your classmates or friends may've engaged in.
{and speaking of "reactions against", it kinda sounds like your sister was reacting against that (or just a "teenage rebellion" as some call it) when she went to church with friends}

[Raphael]

Maybe, but that still makes it sound a bit as if the USA are the outlier here. In global terms, it looks more like the group of countries that you might describe as "the Western World minus the USA and Israel" is the outlier by being so relatively secular.

I'd like to be sure I'm on the same page as you...I always assumed that "the Western World" includes all those countries which used to be colonies of Western nations. Does your statement include those in the "relatively secular" view?

thank you for clarifying.

What? That would mean basically the entire world, with just a handful of exceptions! No, I mean "most of Europe, with the outskirts being kinda fuzzy within Europe, plus the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel". With the exception of the USA and Israel, everywhere on that list seems to be relatively secular to me.

[bradrn]

At the same time, there are disagreements which are fundamental and which cannot be overlooked, such as whether Muhammad is the final prophet.

eh, I'd've certainly thought so...but that was before I asked various Sikhs for their opinion - and some say Yes, and some say No.

Sikhs? I thought Sikhism had no prophets at all, let alone accepting Muhammad as one…

[xxx]

religion is, in part, the equivalent of the law of our secular civilization,
which helps to avoid the genetic egoism of the individual...

nowadays, all that's left to religion is transcendence,
which the rule of law has difficulty embodying,
and western societies have replaced fasting with consumerism...

[keenir]

At the same time, there are disagreements which are fundamental and which cannot be overlooked, such as whether Muhammad is the final prophet.

eh, I'd've certainly thought so...but that was before I asked various Sikhs for their opinion - and some say Yes, and some say No.

Sikhs? I thought Sikhism had no prophets at all, let alone accepting Muhammad as one…

I suppose I could've/should've asked them what the difference is between a Guru and a Prophet.

I always figured that, if someone has discussions with God, then they are a Prophet; if they take instructions from God, they are a prophet.

[keenir]

religion is, in part, the equivalent of the law of our secular civilization,
which helps to avoid the genetic egoism of the individual...

nowadays, all that's left to religion is transcendence,
which the rule of law has difficulty embodying,
and western societies have replaced fasting with consumerism...

wow, you got every line exactly wrong.

[zompist]

Disagreements may be important (i.e. different from convictions about pizza) without really being resolvable. Centrists, liberals, progressives, and communists "can't all be 'right'", and yet all might agree on electing Kamala Harris.

At the same time, there are disagreements which are fundamental and which cannot be overlooked, such as whether Muhammad is the final prophet.

Is that more fundamental than capitalist vs communist conceptions of how to run the state? Yet under the right circumstances these can cooperate. Just as, in fact, under the right circumstances Muslims can cooperate with non-Muslims.

I think what you're pointing to— doctrines that are key for distinguishing a particular religion— can be explained on structuralist lines. Religions are partly defined by what other religions they're not. The Abrahamic religions share a lot of theology about God, and stories about particular prophets. So the Trinity serves to separate Christianity cleanly from Islam; the "final prophet" business to separate Islam from Christianity.

[keenir]

Maybe, but that still makes it sound a bit as if the USA are the outlier here. In global terms, it looks more like the group of countries that you might describe as "the Western World minus the USA and Israel" is the outlier by being so relatively secular.

I'd like to be sure I'm on the same page as you...I always assumed that "the Western World" includes all those countries which used to be colonies of Western nations. Does your statement include those in the "relatively secular" view?

thank you for clarifying.

What? That would mean basically the entire world, with just a handful of exceptions! No, I mean "most of Europe, with the outskirts being kinda fuzzy within Europe, plus the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Israel".

So...Europe + Israel + the Anglosphere, minus Africa, basically?

Thats a little scary to me -- it feels like its saying that, nowhere in South America or Africa, or even India itself, counts as a Western nation.