Pretty much any other major feature of religion you can name is present in rationalism. Rationalism’s resemblance to traditional religion is so extreme that even if rationalism is not, technically, a religion, this seems like it is a pedantic distinction. It certainly has very distinct beliefs and rituals of its own, and only narrowly misses those points of comparison on what seem to be technicalities.
You have come to the wrong place if you want to make an argument that’s not going to be refuted by pedantic distinctions!
But I find your arguments unconvincing on the whole, no pedantism required. My reading is that you’ve successfully argued that rationality is a movement, not too different from many other movements like veganism or communism. The content is different, but the structures are similar. To the extent movements look like religion, it’s because both are for humans, and both work or don’t work based on successfully coordinating humans to take particular actions.
As I see it, that you have to argue that it’s a religion is a bad sign. It means that rationality isn’t passing the smell test. That is, you needed to write a post to argue that rationality is a religion, which I view as evidence against it being a religion, since most religions are clearly religions and no one writes posts arguing that Islam or Hinduism is a religion (if anything, people sometimes write the opposite for various reasons!). If it’s in the category of religions, it’s a marginal case at best.
As I see it, that you have to argue that it’s a religion is a bad sign. It means that rationality isn’t passing the smell test. That is, you needed to write a post to argue that rationality is a religion, which I view as evidence against it being a religion, since most religions are clearly religions and no one writes posts arguing that Islam or Hinduism is a religion (if anything, people sometimes write the opposite for various reasons!). If it’s in the category of religions, it’s a marginal case at best.
How many non-religions have had people write thousand-word posts denying they are religions? Does it come up often? “The fact that someone even wrote <this thing>” does not prove the point you think it does. It proves the opposite point.
This is so common, in fact, that there’s a meme format for it.
I think it’s not uncommon for people to call things they don’t like “religions”, as a way to tacitly assert that the followers of some movement or idea are dogmatic without directly claiming it. The stronger version is calling an idea or an idiology “a cult”.
See this nicely collected list of examples courtesy of Scott, in an essay that aderesses the topic:
On the last Links thread, Eric Raymond claims that environmentalism is a religion. It has “sins” like wasting energy and driving gas-guzzling SUVs. It has “taboos” like genetically modified foods. It has an “apocalypse” in the form of global warming. It even has “rituals” in the form of weekly recycling.
True! It is very often used pejoratively. I am mostly uninterested in whether or not it’s pejorative. I think it’s descriptively accurate. I think the place in thingspace where rationalism lives is close to religion.
How many people have DENIED that transhumanism, social justice, liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, communism, capitalism, objectivism, apple or unix is a religion? Is this a common feature for people interested in those things?
If the standard is “very prominently and loudly denies being a religion” I think you will find that like 10:1 loud denials of being a religion come from cults, not from non-religions.
I am mostly uninterested in whether or not it’s pejorative. I think it’s descriptively accurate.
This discussion has implications on the validity of rationalism on its own terms, and also on how others should relate to rationalism.
The question is about what-is-true, but the reason we’re interested is what-is-good. This means we all have to be extra careful to keep our what-is-good boxes separate from our what-is-true boxes (I’m not accusing you of failing to do so).
I think that’s what you’re implying above, you’re saying “im not calling you names. I’m actually thinking about this!”, which is good. But what you said is dishonest.
It does have implications, and you are interested in them (for good reason)
Nevertheless, a worldview centered on preventing an imminent apocalypse is extremely easy to weaponize.
[...]
Cults are just religious sects that are new, horrible, or both.
My people have something called the Litany of Tarski, for just these situations. It is from one of our most ancient texts.
If [rationalsim is a cult], I want to believe that [rationalism is a cult]. If [rationalism is not a cult], I want to believe that [rationalism is not a cult]. Let me not become attatched to beliefs I do not want.
How many non-religions have had people write thousand-word posts denying they are religions?
Many, actually. I’ve read things arguing variously that:
sports fandom is/isn’t a religion
anime fandom is/isn’t a religion
communism is/isn’t a religion
capitalism is/isn’t a religion
veganism is/isn’t a religion
You know what I’ve read zero words about? Arguments that:
Islam is/isn’t a religion
Judaism is/isn’t a religion
etc.
This, to my reading, is evidence in favor of things people are are/aren’t religions not being religions, or at least not fitting within the category of religion as traditionally understood. Your meme doesn’t really prove anything. It just tries to assert that no, actually, the existence of arguments that something isn’t a religion is evidence in favor of it being a religion, but fails to do any work to establish such a claim, and seems contrary to the evidence I listed above.
Now it would be much better to argue on facts, but unfortunately it’s notoriously hard to define the category of religion accurately, so I’m not sure how we can really do that. Assuming you haven’t cracked the central question of religious studies (a question about which there is only limited consensus), it’s going to be quite hard to look at the features of rationality and say whether or not it’s in the category of religion. And that means we’re left to see if it looks like a central example of religion, which it clearly doesn’t since it’s a matter of contention, and so perhaps the only interesting question is not if it’s a religion but what features of religions does it share (which you do get in to, to your credit, but that’s different from arguing that rationality is a religion).
This is a category argument that I explicitly avoid making and don’t think is meaningful: the word itself does not mean anything and arguing over it is meaningless. You seem to really want to do that anyway because you can support your argument better on basically definitional grounds than factual ones.
This is also being supported by a category of argument for “things people say about stuff”, which is both not a method that you will ever find the truth by (“what do people say the most often? i dunno, i can go find some things I think are similar and then decide how similar they are by how similar the things people say sometimes are”) and cherry picked to support your definition.
Like: this method cannot even in principle tell us anything about rationalism, and if it did, by choosing Islam, Judaism etc as comparison points instead of Scientology, Mormonism or any other smaller, newer or more modern movement is just assuming your conclusion. If you compare the things people say for or against new, modern, small religions (ie, cults) to the things they say about rationalism, then on the terms of “what’s in the discourse is the definition of the thing”, which is in any case trash, rationalism is clearly a new age California cult. So I don’t know why you think that—completely logically invalid, nonsensical—criteria for truth is the one you’d want to use, since it very clearly indicates rationalism is a standard California cult.
edit: and this style of discourse around cults is SO COMMON THERE IS A MEME FORMAT ABOUT IT. It is a King of the Hill joke about cults, because this discourse surrounding cults was so common that King of the Hill made a joke about it, and then it became a meme because enough people found the joke funny AND expected to have occasion to use it in the future that they clipped a meme format about it. You do not want “what does discourse around the thing look like? that clearly defines what it is” to be your source of truth here and it’s insane to me that you imagine you would
This is a category argument that I explicitly avoid making and don’t think is meaningful: the word itself does not mean anything and arguing over it is meaningless. You seem to really want to do that anyway because you can support your argument better on basically definitional grounds than factual ones.
This is an extremely weird position to take given the central claim of this entire post seems to be that rationality fits the definition of a religion. What do you think you’re arguing for in this post, then, if not that?
by choosing Islam, Judaism etc as comparison points instead of Scientology, Mormonism or any other smaller, newer or more modern movement is just assuming your conclusion.
I don’t know what point you think you’re making here but these are also obviously religions.
You have come to the wrong place if you want to make an argument that’s not going to be refuted by pedantic distinctions!
But I find your arguments unconvincing on the whole, no pedantism required. My reading is that you’ve successfully argued that rationality is a movement, not too different from many other movements like veganism or communism. The content is different, but the structures are similar. To the extent movements look like religion, it’s because both are for humans, and both work or don’t work based on successfully coordinating humans to take particular actions.
As I see it, that you have to argue that it’s a religion is a bad sign. It means that rationality isn’t passing the smell test. That is, you needed to write a post to argue that rationality is a religion, which I view as evidence against it being a religion, since most religions are clearly religions and no one writes posts arguing that Islam or Hinduism is a religion (if anything, people sometimes write the opposite for various reasons!). If it’s in the category of religions, it’s a marginal case at best.
(And just to lay my cards on the table, I say this as a religious rationalist, in that I’m religious and also part of the rationalist movement. In fact, I’ve put some effort into trying to convince rationalists to be religious because I think it would be good for them!)
How many non-religions have had people write thousand-word posts denying they are religions? Does it come up often? “The fact that someone even wrote <this thing>” does not prove the point you think it does. It proves the opposite point.
This is so common, in fact, that there’s a meme format for it.
I think it’s not uncommon for people to call things they don’t like “religions”, as a way to tacitly assert that the followers of some movement or idea are dogmatic without directly claiming it. The stronger version is calling an idea or an idiology “a cult”.
See this nicely collected list of examples courtesy of Scott, in an essay that aderesses the topic:
True! It is very often used pejoratively. I am mostly uninterested in whether or not it’s pejorative. I think it’s descriptively accurate. I think the place in thingspace where rationalism lives is close to religion.
How many people have DENIED that transhumanism, social justice, liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, communism, capitalism, objectivism, apple or unix is a religion? Is this a common feature for people interested in those things?
If the standard is “very prominently and loudly denies being a religion” I think you will find that like 10:1 loud denials of being a religion come from cults, not from non-religions.
This discussion has implications on the validity of rationalism on its own terms, and also on how others should relate to rationalism.
The question is about what-is-true, but the reason we’re interested is what-is-good. This means we all have to be extra careful to keep our what-is-good boxes separate from our what-is-true boxes (I’m not accusing you of failing to do so).
I think that’s what you’re implying above, you’re saying “im not calling you names. I’m actually thinking about this!”, which is good. But what you said is dishonest.
It does have implications, and you are interested in them (for good reason)
My people have something called the Litany of Tarski, for just these situations. It is from one of our most ancient texts.
If [rationalsim is a cult], I want to believe that [rationalism is a cult]. If [rationalism is not a cult], I want to believe that [rationalism is not a cult]. Let me not become attatched to beliefs I do not want.
Many, actually. I’ve read things arguing variously that:
sports fandom is/isn’t a religion
anime fandom is/isn’t a religion
communism is/isn’t a religion
capitalism is/isn’t a religion
veganism is/isn’t a religion
You know what I’ve read zero words about? Arguments that:
Islam is/isn’t a religion
Judaism is/isn’t a religion
etc.
This, to my reading, is evidence in favor of things people are are/aren’t religions not being religions, or at least not fitting within the category of religion as traditionally understood. Your meme doesn’t really prove anything. It just tries to assert that no, actually, the existence of arguments that something isn’t a religion is evidence in favor of it being a religion, but fails to do any work to establish such a claim, and seems contrary to the evidence I listed above.
Now it would be much better to argue on facts, but unfortunately it’s notoriously hard to define the category of religion accurately, so I’m not sure how we can really do that. Assuming you haven’t cracked the central question of religious studies (a question about which there is only limited consensus), it’s going to be quite hard to look at the features of rationality and say whether or not it’s in the category of religion. And that means we’re left to see if it looks like a central example of religion, which it clearly doesn’t since it’s a matter of contention, and so perhaps the only interesting question is not if it’s a religion but what features of religions does it share (which you do get in to, to your credit, but that’s different from arguing that rationality is a religion).
This is a category argument that I explicitly avoid making and don’t think is meaningful: the word itself does not mean anything and arguing over it is meaningless. You seem to really want to do that anyway because you can support your argument better on basically definitional grounds than factual ones.
This is also being supported by a category of argument for “things people say about stuff”, which is both not a method that you will ever find the truth by (“what do people say the most often? i dunno, i can go find some things I think are similar and then decide how similar they are by how similar the things people say sometimes are”) and cherry picked to support your definition.
Like: this method cannot even in principle tell us anything about rationalism, and if it did, by choosing Islam, Judaism etc as comparison points instead of Scientology, Mormonism or any other smaller, newer or more modern movement is just assuming your conclusion. If you compare the things people say for or against new, modern, small religions (ie, cults) to the things they say about rationalism, then on the terms of “what’s in the discourse is the definition of the thing”, which is in any case trash, rationalism is clearly a new age California cult. So I don’t know why you think that—completely logically invalid, nonsensical—criteria for truth is the one you’d want to use, since it very clearly indicates rationalism is a standard California cult.
edit: and this style of discourse around cults is SO COMMON THERE IS A MEME FORMAT ABOUT IT. It is a King of the Hill joke about cults, because this discourse surrounding cults was so common that King of the Hill made a joke about it, and then it became a meme because enough people found the joke funny AND expected to have occasion to use it in the future that they clipped a meme format about it. You do not want “what does discourse around the thing look like? that clearly defines what it is” to be your source of truth here and it’s insane to me that you imagine you would
This is an extremely weird position to take given the central claim of this entire post seems to be that rationality fits the definition of a religion. What do you think you’re arguing for in this post, then, if not that?
I don’t know what point you think you’re making here but these are also obviously religions.