What about Islam or Hindu gods. You must think those guys have it all wrong lol.
Between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, it's all the same big man upstairs. Christianity and Islam disagree on who his earthly spokesperson is, and Judaism disagrees he had one at all.
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Between Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, it's all the same big man upstairs. Christianity and Islam disagree on who his earthly spokesperson is, and Judaism disagrees he had one at all.
I'm continually amazed by the number of Christians who think Muslims have a different God from them.
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Have there been any good academic studies or are there any good books anyone would recommend reading to understand how people of varied walks of life end up believing in stuff like this?
To see people actually gathering around a police station and trying to enact a citizen's arrest of the police at the behest of a woman who claims to be queen while handing out vegetable platters and tins of sardines from an RV camper parked at the curb is, well, it requires some kind of explanation for everything that led up to it.
It's certainly not a study or anything academic, but I always encourage people to watch the documentary Behind the Curve. The subject concerns a far less insidious (though no less annoying) topic of anti-intellectualism: flat earthers.
While there are certainly many reasons people become absorbed by these movements and theories, the film really punches home the idea that a sense of community plays an enormous role in recruitment and maintenance of these groups. Feeling special and supported when the entire world is telling you you're wrong can't be discounted.
You can kind of witness the same things when you see videos or pictures of the APP (Alberta Prosperity Project) events. Rooms filled with the same carbon-copy type people, mostly blue hairs and grey beards, that have found a space where they can socialize with other like-minded people. This sense of community and belonging has only been magnified by the pandemic. And, of course, the social media algorithms that have coerced and indoctrinated them during the past 2 - 3 years into an unsustainable belief system.
__________________ "It's a great day for hockey."
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"I see as much misery out of them moving to justify theirselves as them that set out to do harm." -Dr. Amos "Doc" Cochran
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Have there been any good academic studies or are there any good books anyone would recommend reading to understand how people of varied walks of life end up believing in stuff like this?
To see people actually gathering around a police station and trying to enact a citizen's arrest of the police at the behest of a woman who claims to be queen while handing out vegetable platters and tins of sardines from an RV camper parked at the curb is, well, it requires some kind of explanation for everything that led up to it.
I haven’t read it yet, but Suspicious Minds by Rob Brotherton is well-regarded.
Quote:
The author, a psychologist and science writer, is more concerned than Hofstadter with the particular cognitive processes involved in the conspiratorial mentality. Rather than pointing to a paranoid mood that ebbs and flows with political currents, Brotherton treats conspiracy theories as part of a continuum of patterns of thought and behavior that are extremely common and not, for the most part, paranoid.
Much of it comes down to pattern recognition (the brain’s incessant but not always reliable drive to find order) combined with a tendency to overestimate the validity or completeness of the available information. Brotherton writes, “When we’re uninformed -- and we’re all ignorant about a lot of things -- our brain indiscriminately uses whatever is at hand to plaster over the intellectual blind spot.” The author adduces a number of lab experiments showing this, including research that suggests cognitive strain tends to heighten the capacity to imagine structure where none exists.
“By painting conspiracism as some bizarre psychological tic that blights the minds of a handful of paranoid kooks,” he writes, “we smugly absolve ourselves of the faulty thinking we see so readily in others. But we’re doing the same thing as conspiracists who blame all of society’s ills on some small shadowy cabal. And we’re wrong. Conspiracy thinking is ubiquitous, because it’s a product, in part, of how all of our minds are working all the time.”
It's certainly not a study or anything academic, but I always encourage people to watch the documentary Behind the Curve. The subject concerns a far less insidious (though no less annoying) topic of anti-intellectualism: flat earthers.
While there are certainly many reasons people become absorbed by these movements and theories, the film really punches home the idea that a sense of community plays an enormous role in recruitment and maintenance of these groups. Feeling special and supported when the entire world is telling you you're wrong can't be discounted.
You can kind of witness the same things when you see videos or pictures of the APP (Alberta Prosperity Project) events. Rooms filled with the same carbon-copy type people, mostly blue hairs and grey beards, that have found a space where they can socialize with other like-minded people. This sense of community and belonging has only been magnified by the pandemic. And, of course, the social media algorithms that have coerced and indoctrinated them during the past 2 - 3 years into an unsustainable belief system.
Lol! I do too! That Documentary was fantastic on a number of levels.
You're right though about some of the reasons people fall into these fringe beliefs.
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QAnon plugs into the same socket of the brain that religion plugs into. Remove QAnon and religion, and people will find something else that fits that socket. Cults, nationalism, political movements of every stripe.
... sports fandom?
Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
When under stress, many people look for simple answers to complex problems. We embrace narratives with heroes and villains, and champion facts that support those narratives while ignoring or casting suspicion on facts that get in the way. We demonstrate loyalty to our allies in the in-group and shame and denounce the out-group.
We’ve proven we don’t need religion for any of that stuff.
E=NG
We spend time and money on something that doesn't do good for the world, have a sacred place where we meet for our rituals, and harm society by diverting public resources away from better causes.
I like to think of myself as a logical, rational person, but I recognize that tying my emotions to the outcomes that befall a particular group of people because of where I grew up isn't really that.
Recent BBC documentary looks at the religiosity of modern politics.
Quote:
The Church of Social Justice
Helen Lewis was raised a Catholic, but is now an atheist - and has also spent the last ten years writing about feminism. Recently, she was asked if she thought feminism had replaced religion in her life.
It's a timely question, since the British Social Attitudes Survey says that the decline of religious belief is “one of the most important trends in post-war history”. But have we really become less religious? Or has our hunger for truth and meaning simply transferred itself to social justice politics? In this programme, Helen Lewis considers the religious overtones of the “culture wars”. On both left and right, she finds unquestionable doctrines, charismatic preachers, blasphemy and heresy - and the promise of salvation.
Talking to religious leaders, atheists, and voices from across the social and political spectrum, Helen considers the parallels - both good and bad - between traditional religion and modern social justice movements. Helen is also on the hunt for some answers. Can we take the religious fervour out of politics? Or — and this is hard for an atheist like Helen to accept — should we encourage a revival of traditional faiths to fulfil our spiritual impulses?
A personal story on churches. A person I consider very close to myself, a mentor perhaps, not because of his faith or religious ideas, but because in other areas of life he is wise, compassionate and caring. I say this as a non-religious folk.
This individual was a pastor. The individual went on a health leave for months due to debilitating health concerns. Near the end of the health leave, he was fired by the corporate church. During his leave of health absence and the individual considered the firing as ‘out of nowhere’. The church threw him to the ground, didn’t offer any support to him or his family, and he served the church for over 25 years! Now, this person, after being fired so abruptly, I consider went into a depression and unfortunately dwelved into substance abuse, followed by an irrational decision. The church took his credentials away and was essentially ostracized by the denomination, again, giving no support to the family for a person who served them for 25 years. Now, the church gave back the credentials after learning additional information on the situation, they made a grave error and jumped to conclusions.
I’m leaving out certain details as to not give away personal information. But the story really left a lasting remark on myself. I went to church when I was younger (yes, you could consider it as indoctrinated) but haven’t been back to church for at least three/four years, and won’t be returning for the foreseeable future. I now consider myself non-religious and agnostic. The story left such a bad-taste in my mouth just by the way the church treated this person and the family. It was eye-opening. Churches run as businesses and should be taxed as such. I will be deleting this post soon but I want the truth out there. Church trauma is a real thing. And to clarify, when I mean church, I’m not specifically discussing it as “a single church” but rather a denomination.
Last edited by TherapyforGlencross; 08-21-2022 at 08:51 AM.
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I’m not religious in the slightest but this post is pretty bigoted.
That's a pretty big stretch, especially considering TUPOC have been in the news for being evicted from a church they tried to rent and turn into some kind of "embassy".
With that said, here's a take on militant atheism I've always enjoyed:
__________________ "It's a great day for hockey."
-'Badger' Bob Johnson (1931-1991)
"I see as much misery out of them moving to justify theirselves as them that set out to do harm." -Dr. Amos "Doc" Cochran
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