It also seems to me that the US is more prone to conspiracy theories on a grand scale than many other countries where the conspiracy theories seem to rise and fall with less effect on the rest of the population.
Over the last two centuries the US has had major scares from the Jesuits, the Illuminati, the Pope (Jesuits included), the Austr-hungarian Empire (yah, I know), the German Empire and lately Russia.
The rise of the US style of evangelicals seems to have strengthened this tendency. Evangelical followers who tend to be “right-wing authoritarians” in Bob Altemeyer"s somewhat unfortunate terminology are capable of believing “many as six impossible things before breakfast” even if they contradict one another. They easily an fall prey to a conspiracist leader.
But that’s not really the same thing: you can go into an office block or shopping mall or whatever and see dozens of people going safely up and down in elevators day after day, the news isn’t full of stories of horrifying elevator accidents, and so on. That kind of evidence is missing for most religious assertions: believing them takes a different kind of faith.
(A better example would be people continuing to travel by car, despite readily available statistics on road traffic accidents. I stopped commuting by car nine years ago, and now I can’t believe I did it for so long. It’s a remarkably stupid thing to do, if you have a viable alternative.)
The idea that the American political sphere is more prone to conspiracy theories and scares of this sort is one with a long pedigree:
Of course, a list of these scares wouldn’t be complete without the the century-long paranoia and periodic terror regarding Socialism and the USSR that swept the USA repeatedly.
I disagree. With faith, your ”evidence” of benefit is watching your fellow believers be cared for, supported, and validated as a reward for their belief. That’s the same, IMHO, as watching folks ride elevators - everyone you know believes and they’re good people, so why shouldn’t I?
I’m not religious, but I’d argue that theology is a far more complex set of beliefs than just accepting imaginary things, and it’s not all bad stuff.
That’s exactly what it is, though. Yes, many theologians are great at rhetoric and are well spoken and so on, but at the end of the day, their field is making claims about god(s) (the “theo” of their “logy”). If there’s no theo, the logy is just fan fiction.
Plus, I’d also argue that the ruling ideology that shapes all our lives is built equally on things we can’t “prove” like capitalism being the best means of organizing our collective economic life. People believe that, even when the facts starkly contradict that.
Well, “proof” is something that doesn’t really exist outside mathematics. Other fields, such as science. natural or social, have to simply rely on evidence. And while the shortcomings of capitalism are real, the evidence of practical alternatives to it (rather than simply controlling its excesses through taxation and regulation as in the Scandinavian model) doesn’t seem to be very good, either simply failing like the phalanxes of the Fourierists or turning into murderous tyrannies like the Soviet Union and its imitators.
Capitalism and mass production are killing all of us. We are sacrificing ourselves to the holy market, and doing so willingly. It’s a mass delusion that TINA which will destroy humanity.
It’s easy to mock TINA as just Thatcherism, but the ball is in the court of the people who claim that there is an alternative to capitalism. What exactly is it and what evidence is there that it is workable?
Dunno how much it counts as an alternative, but European-style social democracy works very well.
Ie., a market-based economy w. progressive taxation, socialized medicine, robust welfare system, free or at least affordable higher education, and solid workers’ rights.
But you’re conflating evidence of the psychological and social benefits of religious belief with evidence for the beliefs themselves: unless you’re arguing that because of those benefits, it’s rational to try to convince oneself into believing (or even to simply pretend to believe), a sort of secular Pascal’s Wager. I’m sure that’s a factor for more than a few believers (not least for religious ministers with private doubts), and as an ex-believer myself I’m well aware of the sense of brotherhood (for want of a better word) that organised religion can give. But if you promote the benefits, you must also acknowledge the downsides: “Catholic guilt” is a stereotype for a reason.
Not really. It’s more like being part of an elevator support group, one where everyone is extremely keen on elevators, supports each other in their love of elevators, and hopes to go in an elevator someday – but where no one has actually seen, still less ridden, one.
I have never seen Paris, but I believe Paris exists based on the evidence that I have seen of it.
For people of faith in a god (or gods, or other unexplained phenomena) the same holds true for what they believe in. If you don’t believe, you simply see it as evidence of something else.
Atheists are just as capable of believing unsupportable things. Like, for instance, that they are somehow smarter and more rational than any person of faith.
Again, it’s not the same. You may not have seen Paris in person, but you’ve probably seen photographs or film of Paris. And you’ve almost certainly been to other towns or cities, so accepting the existence of another one shouldn’t be too much of a stretch.
I guess part of the problem I have with this sort of argument is that in the religious tradition in which I was raised, faith was supposed to be difficult. Hence the story of Doubting Thomas, and phrases like “the gift of faith” and “the dark night of the soul”. The priests I knew would have taken umbrage at the suggestion that believing in God was fundamentally no different from believing in elevators, or in Paris.
I absolutely agree. But that’s still capitalism. And it is clear that a lot of people who rail against “capitalism” aren’t just arguing for the Scandinavian model but want something more radical. But what?
But, you’ll ignore anyone making criticism if they aren’t giving you an entire solution to our global, collective problems. That’s not how gonna get us anywhere. It’s not how our current system was built, so why do you expect someone to hand you an entirely perfect solution to the complicated problems we face.
It’s a good start, but neo-liberalism has become part of their structures, as well (look at Marcon, attempting to break the power of unions in France, or the UK dropping out of the EU).
The first goal should not be growth, but sustainability. Does it feed people, house people, educate people, care for people? Is it environmentally sound, not green washing? Is it centered on people, rather than corporations? If the answer to these are no, throw it out.
