Also thanks for the suggestion!
TheAspiringHumanist
Karma: 3
I have encountered this issue of “religion” having far reaching unintended connotations before by talking with Humanists who were aghast at the notion of calling Humanism a religion. The term really doesn’t work with secular people. And for good reason, as even though I myself had a fairly amicable exit with the church I know many who have risked their wellbeing leaving.
I just used the term here to try and get at the general role such an organization would mimic, in that it would provide community, traditions, ethics, and an understanding of the world grounded in reality enough not to have serious ethical connotations.
Again, the organization would never market itself as a religion. That’s stupid. I should have said that front and center a bit more obviously.
The part about society being atomized is the part I’d like to push against rather. Humans are social creatures. I am fairly confident based off of even a cursory reading of the subject that community and social ties are very important to human wellbeing, and that the atomization of society is really not something we should be simply shrugging our shoulders at. If you meant it as a practical obstacle, then I agree it would make such an idea harder to implement, but if you meant it as a sign that religion was outdated then I would push back and say that in this respect the communal aspect of religion is actually likely superior to the hyper-individualized society we now live in.
Oh I’m well versed in the horrors of contemporary religious tradition and ritual. The idea was always to mimic the good without the bad.
The tradition itself would never be good, it would be the end to which it serves that makes it good. This ideally keeps traditions in check.
If anyone notices that the whole “but what WOULD you value?” bit sounds a whole lot like the CEV, then rest assured I am aware of this. I actually developed all of this independent of the CEV, and only after trying to find if anyone else had thought of something like this did I find the CEV. It was reassuring my thoughts weren’t totally alien. The CEV is technically quite different though, not quite defining between external and internal and also initially being intended for AI Alignment rather than grounding ethics.