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10 atheist quotes that will make you question religion


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2019 Apr 4, 7:14am   3,665 views  87 comments

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From psychology to neuroscience, what we believe is not nearly as relevant as why we do. The first few quotes below are big-picture social questions, while the remaining come from neuroscience and psychology books. They are not all atheistic per se, but they do point to the fact that humans tend to think very highly of themselves and what we believe, and that there are biological explanations for why we feel the way we do. The more we recognize that, the more likely we are to stop thinking there is only one way to discover truth.

On ego

"How much vanity must be concealed—not too effectively at that—in order to pretend that one is the personal object of a divine plan?" — Christopher Hitchens, God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything

Here comes logic

"Monotheism explains order, but is mystified by evil. Dualism explains evil, but is puzzled by order. There is one logical way of solving the riddle: To argue that there is a single omnipotent God who created the entire universe—and He's evil. But nobody in history has had the stomach for such a belief." — Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

The difference is often language

"In America, belief in the unreal seems to be very fungible. Individuals don't so much abandon religious fantasy in favor of reason as find different fantasies that better suit their particular excitement and credulity quotients." — Kurt Andersen, Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire

A Buddhist approach

"Mindfulness accepts as its focus of inquiry whatever arises in one's field of awareness, no matter how disturbing or painful it might be. One neither seeks nor expects to find some greater truth lurking behind the veil of appearances. What appears and how you respond to it: that alone is what matters." — Stephen Batchelor, Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist

Enter Darwin

"Comprehension, far from being a Godlike talent from which all design must flow, is an emergent effect of systems of uncomprehending competence: natural selection on the one hand, and mindless computation on the other." — Daniel Dennett, From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds

The physical can be spiritual

"Evolution simply happened—foresightless, by chance, without goal. There is nobody to despise or rebel against—not even ourselves. And this is not some bizarre form of neurophilosophical nihilism but rather a point of intellectual honesty and great spiritual depth." — Thomas Metzinger, The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self

Superego

"Supernatural thinking is simply the natural consequence of failing to match our intuitions with the true reality of the world." — Bruce M. Hood, The Science of Superstition: How the Developing Brain Creates Supernatural Beliefs

Out of body is still in the body

"Out-of-body flight "really happens," then—it is a real physical event, but only in the patient's brain and, as a result, in his subjective experience. The out-of-body state is, by and large, an exacerbated form of the dizziness that we all experience when our vision disagrees with our vestibular system, as on a rocking boat." — Stanislas Dehaene, Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts

Randomness produces beautiful (or efficient) results

"If you let something tumble long enough, it comes out almost perfect. Such is the power of random collisions and patience, and that constitutes the sum total of nature's intelligence. All the rough edges, the flaws, the things that don't work are systematically dispatched by natural selection. What remains and carries on into the next generation and the next after that and so on are the advantageous aspects, what does work what makes survival easier. And survival is the fuel of natural selection." — Rodolfo R. Llinas, I of the vortex: From Neurons to Self

"Everything happens for a reason"

"A long line of research in cognitive science has documented that people make causal attributions about events as a means of maintaining personal control. It is the feeling that things are spinning out of control that motivates the human brain to find a pattern in events and try to predict what is going to happen next. The left-brain interpreter thus will be activated whenever the individual senses a lack of control. Superstitions and conspiracy theories can be seen as the societal consequences of the interpreter's drive to find a causal explanation for events that are seemingly out of control." — Ronald T. Kellogg, The Making of the Mind: The Nueroscience of Human Nature

https://bigthink.com/culture-religion/10-atheist-quotes-that-make-you-question-religion?rebelltitem=3#rebelltitem3

#Religion #Beliefs

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28   EBGuy   2019 Apr 5, 12:21pm  

Kakistocracy says
Religion is not required to get that sense of "community" when a group of people are abused, controlled, ethnically cleansed, harassed, systematically fucked over etc. by another group for decades and generations.

It is required to transcend family and clan boundaries. That's why it's such a powerful evolutionary force. It allows you to organize goups of disparate people & tribes. Otherwise, you're left in a state of perpetual tribal warfare.
29   anonymous   2019 Apr 5, 12:28pm  

EBGuy says
Otherwise, you're left in a state of perpetual tribal warfare.


Which is pretty much the current state of affairs both in the U.S. and many other countries and there is no shortage of religion either - it actually helps divide people further while.organizing groups of disparate people & tribes into separate and unequal fiefdoms of hate against anyone that is not them.
30   anonymous   2019 Apr 5, 12:29pm  

EBGuy says
That's why it's such a powerful evolutionary force


That would be science where you can not just make up shit as you go along
31   EBGuy   2019 Apr 5, 1:03pm  

And yet, we're evolved for the storyverse. Have you listened to Sam Harris try to describe a soccer match?
32   Shaman   2019 Apr 5, 1:05pm  

Kakistocracy says
EBGuy says
That's why it's such a powerful evolutionary force


That would be science where you can not just make up shit as you go along


Which would mean that trannies hate science because it proves they are mental.
33   Bd6r   2019 Apr 5, 1:07pm  

EBGuy says
It is required to transcend family and clan boundaries.

Pax Romana and now US are not based on religion. Neither is most of Europe
34   EBGuy   2019 Apr 5, 1:28pm  

d6rB says
Pax Romana and now US are not based on religion. Neither is most of Europe

Don't be so sure about that...
As an agnostic in terms of his religious commitments, in this excerpt Tom Holland nevertheless describes the way that the birth of Christianity has shaped much of what we value in Western society in terms of human rights, culture and rule of law.
www.youtube.com/embed/AIJ9gK47Ogw
35   EBGuy   2019 Apr 7, 10:56pm  

Kakistocracy says
Which is pretty much the current state of affairs both in the U.S.

Take a deep breath my friend. The United States isn't in a state of perpetual tribal warfare. According to the ADL, we had only 50 extremist killings in a country of 327 million people... and some of those killings were extremists murdering their own children or relatives -- not members of a tribal outgroup.
36   komputodo   2019 Apr 7, 11:19pm  

Quigley says
Anyone else want to add to the list of things Kaki won’t ever question?

Is it possible that he has a severe case of TDS?
37   Blue   2019 Apr 8, 12:08am  

No one can bring Atheist back to barn. But can make them pretended believer with discrimination etc.
In US about 26% are out of barn, this number is about 40% for young and its growing. This will make a great country. A day will come for believer of old, existing or brand new god of any type, to be dragged onto mental facility.
38   anonymous   2019 Apr 8, 2:09am  

EBGuy says
Take a deep breath my friend. The United States isn't in a state of perpetual tribal warfare


Au contraire - no need for killing when you have "cold wars" of political tribal warfare 24 x 7 and election campaigning that never ends.

Add in the unresolved problems (cold wars) from the past decades of race, sexuality, gender, etc.

The country is no more at harmony now, then when all the winds of discontent were blamed on the previous administration.

Bringing segments of the population of the country together on anger and hate seems to be the objective as opposed to bringing the greater population together on things for the good of society in general.

This would seem to be directly related to a lack of leadership - from any one person or other assemblage of people in any political or religious affiliation(s).
40   FuckTheMainstreamMedia   2019 Apr 8, 5:06am  

This is all so silly. The Democrats and the left are busy building a new religion around ideals where government replaces God.

Amazingly, supported by nearly all the ardent atheists!
41   Reality   2019 Apr 8, 6:05am  

Blue says
A day will come for believer of old, existing or brand new god of any type, to be dragged onto mental facility.


LOL! That too has happened previously: the guillotine was invented to speed up the chopping of heads belonging to Catholic priests and nuns, but it didn't take long before the machine started working on the necks of the revolutionaries. The French Revolution was officially atheistic, but it took very little time before the atheistic leaders realized that they needed religion to run the society (as neighbors started denouncing neighbors to death in hopes of looting the victim families): first the Church of Reason, then the Church of Supreme-Being (Robespire himself), with the Church of Supreme-Being chopping off the heads of the leaders of the Church of Reason (his former friends) quickly followed by the head of the Church of Supreme-Being being severed on the guillotine.

When a previously predominant traditional religion dies in a society/culture, what happens is crisis of civilization, usually characterized by high crime rate, personality cult and chaos, until the next predominant religious tradition can be established (of course, religious institutions/establishment become corrupt over a much longer time period too, and eventually give rise to the loss of faith and crisis of civilization, so the cycles repeat). The fundamental reason is that earthly bureaucrats can not run a society efficiently without the help of religion: in a city like Detroit and Chicago, only 15% of murder cases are solved; so without some sort of god(s)/religion giving people an incentive (rational or not) to supervise themselves, it's quite impossible to maintain an orderly society after the entire society realizes that they can get away with murder 85% of the time.

Richard Dawkins famously said that religion is like a mental virus for a society; IMHO, a better analogy is that religion to a society is like Mitocondria to a cell: Mitocondria has its own DNA distinct from that of the cell's, so likely the result of an invasion/implantation at some point in the distant past (just like a virus), yet a high functioning cell can not survive without Mitocondria.
42   marcus   2019 Apr 8, 6:26am  

I questioned religion a lot while I was a child (teen actually). Those type of quotes(OP above) definitely impacted my thinking about 45 years ago. I was a fan of Bertrand Russel.

I'm not religious now, and I know it's counter intuitive, but I think religion going away will continue to coincide with the downfall of civilization.

EBGuy says
As an agnostic in terms of his religious commitments, in this excerpt Tom Holland nevertheless describes the way that the birth of Christianity has shaped much of what we value in Western society in terms of human rights, culture and rule of law.


Yep.
43   EBGuy   2019 Apr 8, 1:39pm  

Blue says
No one can bring Atheist back to barn.

Perhaps you didn't get the memo...
www.youtube.com/embed/iBSOTY1rTtg
44   Shaman   2019 Apr 8, 2:07pm  

EBGuy says
Perhaps you didn't get the memo...


Exactly, as JP says: “Life is pain, and pain without meaning is unendurable.” Therefore we require meaning to make life worth living, and make it more than just mere meaning, to make it an act of heroism. Otherwise we slide into nihilism and despair, with all the inevitable addictions to our coping drugs of choice.

This truth resounds deeply within people who think, and thinkers tend towards the siren song of atheism more than anyone.
46   Bd6r   2019 Apr 8, 7:23pm  

EBGuy says
Christianity has shaped much of what we value in Western society in terms of human rights, culture and rule of law.

Law is so-called Roman law in most Europe (and LA in USA). Culture - Christians appropriated Pagan holidays (Christmas etc). Human rights - that's Enlightenment.
I do not deny that Christian faith has had a lot of influence, but it is just one of many layers that forms European and American civilizations.
47   Y   2019 Apr 9, 7:02am  

All those benefits are also available to those believing in a godlike force that's yet to be defined by man.
Blue says
The benefits of being an atheist are:
48   HeadSet   2019 Apr 9, 1:33pm  

One very important attribute of Christianity which is usually overlooked by leftists is that Christians are "innoculated" against Islam.

Actually, that "inoculation" is from modern society, science, and medicine. The Christianity we have in the USA is very lightweight, very few believe traditional Christian points that God will take care of you like how does the Lilies of the Field, or that faith will heal a snake wound. Lightweight Christians would rather find jobs and earn money rather than wait for a Divinity to provide, and will see a doctor when sick. Lightweight Christianity is acceptable to people who who believe in Jesus "just in case," but will not go as far as to abstain from sex before marriage or give all their money to the poor. Churches in the USA are more like social clubs than cults.

The deep faithful, those that seem to have a genetic predisposition toward worship, are susceptible to change from Christianity into devout Muslims, Devil Worshipers, Marxists, or other cults.
49   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 9, 3:44pm  

Patrick says
That is, even if Christianity itself isn't scientifically true, it does have the objective benefit ...


It's becoming a fashion to claim religions has benefits even if it's not true .
That is: let's all believe something we know is not true - i.e. we don't really believe - because of the side effects of such beliefs.

If this ever worked, imagine what believing in the real reasons to act in a beneficial way will do for you.
50   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 9, 3:48pm  

HeadSet says
Churches in the USA are more like social clubs than cults.


All cults are social clubs, first and foremost. Tribes.
51   marcus   2019 Apr 9, 9:44pm  

HeadSet says
Lightweight Christians


This Christianity you call lightweight is most of Christianity. Catholics, Lutheran, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians and all the other protestant offshoots.

What are the heavyweights ? Mormons ? Christian Scientists ? Baptists ? Perhaps the Greek Orthodox ?
52   Reality   2019 Apr 9, 10:04pm  

Heraclitusstudent says
It's becoming a fashion to claim religions has benefits even if it's not true .
That is: let's all believe something we know is not true - i.e. we don't really believe - because of the side effects of such beliefs.

If this ever worked, imagine what believing in the real reasons to act in a beneficial way will do for you.


The shocking truth is that for the bottom 80% of the population, abiding by the law may not be beneficial to himself. In a city like Detroit and Chicago, only 15% of the murders are solved, so statistically speaking one can get away with murder 85% of the time. For us in the top 20% of the society, there are plenty reasons not to take that 15% risk of being caught. However, for the bottom 80% of the population, it's not clear at all robbery and murder is not a statistically winning strategy. Please reference Dosdoevsky's Crime and Punishment on how that math works for a typical over-educated man with little marketable skills. That is indeed a problem with societies that emphasize education over market. Your perspective is showing some of that. Higher education churning out "over-educated" with similar skills therefore none marketable is in fact a highly dangerous social condition.

Historically, there have been attempts to solve that problem: the government-God, with extremely harsh laws to reign in those rotten "calculating" population . . . but those tend not to last long either as the officialdom tends to become extremely corrupt within a couple generations and the harsh laws reaching capital punishment on numerous crimes eventually force people into rebellion as a person can only die once.

So far as we know, religion reconciling people to their existing social conditions and incentivize people to self-supervise, tends to be a far more effective tool for social stability than just about anything else. A religion built around the government bureaucrats' super-human ability to enforce law and justice is even less sustainable than religions built around supernatural beings.
53   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 9, 10:39pm  

Reality says
So far as we know, religion reconciling people to their existing social conditions and incentivize people to self-supervise, tends to be a far more effective tool for social stability than just about anything else.

Yeah: let's believe something we know is not true - or make other people believe it.
You're confusing so many things: the necessity of some level of tribalism: whether religious or nationalistic.
The organization of society top-down vs bottom-up.
The individual incentives: do you need to believe in God so as to not want to rob your neighbor? That's a specious argument. Most atheists do believe in being part of a larger community (tribe), being good people and helping others. No state required.
54   Reality   2019 Apr 9, 11:01pm  

Heraclitusstudent says
do you need to believe in God so as to not want to rob your neighbor? That's a specious argument. Most atheists do believe in being part of a larger community (tribe), being good people and helping others. No state required.


How do you explain the less traditionally religious political Left's penchant for robbing their neighbors via "taxes" and transfers to themselves? The desire to rob neighbors is obviously there for the overwhelming majority of the population, only a matter of how they justify their robbery and what kind of justice mechanism that they fear might restrain them: The default religion of the Government-God just happens to be a more costly one than most religions involving super-natural gods. Most atheists are in reality worshipers of the Government-God religion.

Let me put it this way: if you owe two people money, one would break your legs if you don't pay back, whereas the other is nice and wouldn't threaten you; whom would you pay back first? Most people would pay the former before the latter. Most people are simply not good people, as they clearly would facilitate evil due to fear of evil. In the absence of a more traditional religion, people would fall under the spell of the default Government-God due to this fear and servileness. "Being good" is a luxury that only people who can afford more than their own (minimum) expectations can afford.
55   HeadSet   2019 Apr 10, 8:35am  

marcus says
HeadSet says
Lightweight Christians


This Christianity you call lightweight is most of Christianity. Catholics, Lutheran, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians and all the other protestant offshoots.

What are the heavyweights ? Mormons ? Christian Scientists ? Baptists ? Perhaps the Greek Orthodox ?


Yes, I believe we agree here.

The Mormons I know seemed to be heavyweights, as they are very strict in beliefs, no sex before marriage at all, no drugs, strong accommodation to Mormon poor, absolute belief in some real tall tales, and patronizing Mormon firms and investments whenever available. Other heavyweights would be vow of poverty Franciscans, and Orthodox Christians.
56   EBGuy   2019 Apr 10, 1:24pm  

Heraclitusstudent says
The individual incentives: do you need to believe in God so as to not want to rob your neighbor? That's a specious argument. Most atheists do believe in being part of a larger community (tribe), being good people and helping others. No state required.

This is taken from a Jonathan Haidt TED talk: The moral roots of liberals and conservatives (see 12:00 mark in video).
Altruistic punishment in humans by Ernst Fehr & Simon Gachter published in Nature.
From the abstract: We show that cooperation flourishes if altruistic punishment is possible, and breaks down if it is ruled out.
57   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 10, 9:52pm  

Reality says
How do you explain the less traditionally religious political Left's penchant for robbing their neighbors via "taxes"


How do you explain atheist libertarians?
There is a giant false dichotomy circling in the head of conservatives: if we lose religion, the statism will automatically take its place, probably in the form of soviet style collectivism.

How about no bullshit?
58   AD   2019 Apr 10, 10:01pm  

Heraclitusstudent says
Reality says
How do you explain the less traditionally religious political Left's penchant for robbing their neighbors via "taxes"


How do you explain atheist libertarians?
There is a giant false dichotomy circling in the head of conservatives: if we lose religion, the statism will automatically take its place, probably in the form of soviet style collectivism.

How about no bullshit?


Or the ChiCom version; heaven help us if that happens
59   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 10, 10:06pm  

Religious conservatives like Ben Shapiro are all ready to concede they do not believe in the most naive parts of the bible (like the flood) but they believe somehow "Judeo-christian" morality enabled the western civilization.
How does he pick and choose what to respect in the Bible? Uh... REASON... of course.

Give me a break. Christian morality has been for a long time about killing Jews like Ben Shapiro, killing Protestants if you were Catholic and vice-versa. Christian morality has been for centuries about torturing any intellectual investigating something that could contradict dogmas. Dogmas without which the entire edifice would collapse.

Ben Shapiro wants to provide logical reasons why his moral is necessary, but doesn't eat pork because of dogmas.
How did "Judeo-christian" Western civilization flourished with so many Christians eating pork? I would like to hear his explanation.

His line of thinking makes no sense whatsoever.
60   Patrick   2019 Apr 10, 10:11pm  

EBGuy says
Altruistic punishment in humans by Ernst Fehr & Simon Gachter published in Nature.


Thanks! The article is not free, but at least the abstract is:

Human cooperation is an evolutionary puzzle. Unlike other creatures, people frequently cooperate with genetically unrelated strangers, often in large groups, with people they will never meet again, and when reputation gains are small or absent. These patterns of cooperation cannot be explained by the nepotistic motives associated with the evolutionary theory of kin selection and the selfish motives associated with signalling theory or the theory of reciprocal altruism. Here we show experimentally that the altruistic punishment of defectors is a key motive for the explanation of cooperation. Altruistic punishment means that individuals punish, although the punishment is costly for them and yields no material gain. We show that cooperation flourishes if altruistic punishment is possible, and breaks down if it is ruled out. The evidence indicates that negative emotions towards defectors are the proximate mechanism behind altruistic punishment. These results suggest that future study of the evolution of human cooperation should include a strong focus on explaining altruistic punishment.


I learned a new term: "altruistic punishment"

Makes sense to me. I've felt that urge.
61   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 10, 10:15pm  

The truth is the western had to fight religion tooth and nail every step of the way in order to flourish.

Ben Shapiro is a nice guy. Don't let that fool you.
62   Reality   2019 Apr 10, 10:16pm  

Heraclitusstudent says
Reality says
How do you explain the less traditionally religious political Left's penchant for robbing their neighbors via "taxes"


How do you explain atheist libertarians?


I asked "how do you explain the less traditionally religious political Left's penchant for robbing their neighbors via 'taxes' and transfers to themselves?" as a way of pointing out the mistaken assumption you made about most people don't want to rob their neighbors. The deeper reality is that most people have no qualms about robbing their neighbors when necessary and can get away with it. Most people don't do that personally in real life (when outside voting booths) only because it's not necessary to take the risk of getting shot by their neighbors or getting caught by either earthly enforcers or God/gods/karma.

As for Atheist Libertarians, I can think of at least two possibilities for someone taking that combination of positions:

1. Too naive and don't understand the fundamental evil and servileness of most human beings;

2. Recognizing the basic evil and servileness of most human beings, and further recognize that government bureaucrats with privileges (while still being greedy/evil and servile if not more so than the average population) would only make the situation worse.


There is a giant false dichotomy circling in the head of conservatives: if we lose religion, the statism will automatically take its place, probably in the form of soviet style collectivism.

How about no bullshit?


It's not a false dichotomy but a valid expectation born out of numerous historical experience and precedence. French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution, Cambodian Revolution, etc. etc. were all militantly atheistic and quickly turned into personality cults built around the living political leaders. In fact, it's entirely possible that at least the 3 monotheist religions starting with Judaism was invented precisely to curb against the Government-God that the Pharoah embodied. It's quite possible that much of the promotion of atheism promoted by the gate-keepers in the past century was done precisely to promote a more powerful and more invasive government . . . just as how it was done in French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution, Cambodian Revolution, etc. etc. numerous times in the past.
63   Reality   2019 Apr 10, 10:34pm  

The most important reason for the flourishing of West was political fragmentation, and the resulting competitive environment for new useful ideas (e.g. effective guns, fast ships, steam engine, rail roads, etc. all of which would have been discouraged and most likely banned outright in a big unified political entity that give priority to preserving existing political/economic interests while facing no competitive pressure from the outside). The story about the Tower of Babel in the Bible seems to give some hint that there had been much more advanced global civilization on the planet than what's taught in typical history textbooks. Likewise, the prevalence of massive flooding in the historical/founding myths of almost all cultures on this planet may well be more than a co-incidence.

Remember Arthur C. Clarke's quote: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Read up on the Cargo Cult history. The Papua New Guinea primitives apparently considered American transport planes dropping food and supply to US Army units on the ground to be gods. That was during WWII, less than 80 years ago. Likewise, human ancestors tens of thousands of years ago would perceive space aliens arriving on the planet via flying machines and doing genetic modifications to human ancestors to be gods or God, if there was such encounter. If.
64   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 11, 10:59am  

Reality says
The deeper reality is that most people have no qualms about robbing their neighbors when necessary and can get away with it.


That's a very depressing view of humanity that quite obviously doesn't match reality. People in times of need are very often helping others in their community. Why? Because human beings have empathy for others. They have compassion. And most do believe in an orderly community, and where they expect to be respected they understand they have to provide the same respect for others. This is not rocket science.
And this has nothing to do with religion.

One could say morals exist in a pack of hungry wolves that refrain from eating each others.
Similarly evolution has built compassion and the compulsion to help each others in humans.

Not only that, but within a tribe, belonging is vital, people are simply afraid of not conforming because there lives depend on being accepted by the tribe. This fear goes from simple shame, to the fear of being excluded by their fellow tribesmen. Shame, fear of judgment by others are very much in effect today. Have nothing to do with law enforcement per say. This is a natural behavior of humans.
Again, no religion required.

Reality says
how do you explain the less traditionally religious political Left's penchant for robbing their neighbors via 'taxes' and transfers to themselves


I can look around in the BA and many wealthy people are in favor of this. Robbing themselves, not exactly to their benefits. Why? Because they truly have pity and compassion for the poor. However you call it "robbing", you can't escape the fact that the left at least partially acts out of compassion.
65   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 11, 11:15am  

Reality says
It's not a false dichotomy but a valid expectation born out of numerous historical experience and precedence. French Revolution, Russian Revolution, Chinese Revolution, Cambodian Revolution, etc. etc. were all militantly atheistic and quickly turned into personality cults built around the living political leaders.


We already established in previous discussions that you are confused regarding the ideological anchors of the French revolution. It was certainly not based on personality cults.

The reality is you are confusing the human need for tribalism, with the requirement of national tribes to replace the religious tribes.
The 20th century was an historical one-off where the centers of powers emerged as national level (before that they were far more regional) and simultaneously mass-media made it possible to propagandize ideology. This sudden alignment of forces resulted in Nazism and Communism, hijacking the human need for tribalism.
But this evidence (quite anecdotal based on history) certainly doesn't prove that more healthy forms of tribalism cannot exist outside nationalism+ideology or religion.
Tribalism takes many benign forms, from sport teams, communities, companies, political parties, army, nations, religions.
Nowadays most people are parts of several tribes, at several scales. Which is why we no longer need or believe in statist tribes trying to be everything to everyone, and replacing religion.
We just need to render each tribes the role that belong to them.
66   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 11, 11:21am  

Reality says
The most important reason for the flourishing of West was political fragmentation


BS. Europe in the middle ages was fragmented in counties and baronies owing a lose allegiance to a king, often not talking the same language. Talk of political fragmentation.
As time passed, power was increasingly concentrated. You had city states, then in nation states, then united states.

What made civilization possible was the progressive lifting of the carcan of obscurantism brought on by the church, seeking to maintain its power. This resulted first in the renaissance. And from there science and technology progressed to the point where new industries were possible. We know the hiccups: Galileo and others.
67   Heraclitusstudent   2019 Apr 11, 12:13pm  

Reality says
most likely banned outright in a big unified political entity that give priority to preserving existing political/economic interests while facing no competitive pressure from the outside


Where did a "big unified political entity" faced no competitive pressure from the outside?
China maybe? This is why they stagnated so long.
Not the West where many smaller countries were always competing against each others.

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