And yet he chose to associate himself, in however bland a fashion, with the religious festival period which he’s used the greetings for.
Mix in minimalist, new-age pandering references to Buddhism (on Marks part) as much as you want, I still see him associating himself with the underlying white, religious power base which those motivated by Machiavellian piety, as you rightly say, would rather you just accept a kind of quasi-mostly-sorta-nod-and-a-wink-religious-don’t-you-know, public avowal which I’ve previously said I thought was a hallmark of religion.
It just so happens that the Abrahamic religious background is what he can comfortably claim allegiance to without too many deep questions about his motivation. Which the notional mention of Buddhism also serves to protect him from. We all like the ideas but who really follows Buddhism?
You can be picky about configurations all you want, he’s pandering to a more specific base than ‘the religious’.
You make my point for me.[quote=“nemomen, post:206, topic:92102”]
This is a difficult position to justify well.
[/quote]
You honestly never shared a house with babies, or even infants?. This is a glaring gap in the character sheet of someone professing to be in the know as to human life. I think, a gap entitling others to discount your opinion.
I am sorry, I completely missed that, and didn’t try to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Was writing stuff on the internet, probably had wrong, argumentative side of mind working, not interpretive part. Sadly obvious what you meant now, in hindsight.
If you read more carefully, you’ll see that I contradicted you.
I have kids. This helped further persuade me that the idea of the human mind as tabula rasa is a simplistic mess philosophically and also falsified by CogSci. I think in general we don’t exactly disagree on the big picture here (religions are a human socio-cultural construct), but I think the topic is actually a lot more complex, nuanced, and interesting than your simplistic account. The plus side is that studying anthropology of religion, philosophy of religion and related topics not only helps one form a more informed and nuanced view of the topic, but it’s interesting as well.
Did you miss the italics in my quoting you? You did, in fact, make my point for me when you wrote
there’s some research that suggests brains are hard-wired to invent gods.
You meant to contradict me, no doubt, but you didn’t. Possibly you miss my point, but I don’t expect to overcome your indoctrination on the topic, so I won’t even try.
Not only is the human mind totally and utterly tabula rasa at birth, it is non-existent. It arises in the prepared matrix that is the human brain, via experience, and becomes a human mind as opposed to something else* purely and simply through exposure to other human minds.
The topic of religion isn’t interesting except to those people indoctrinated from birth in it, much the same way that other bestial faults humans indulge in are acquired tastes. To the untainted mind, distaste is the best one can hope for, because the sheer pointless waste and hatred and destruction religions represent, is not something pleasant to study.
Hearing one, or two examples of religious foibles and stupidities, is slightly amusing, like a few minutes of watching Jim Carey gibber and gesticulate. Deeper study is sickening, can not be otherwise. All that waste of human potential . . .
Something like a chimp, from the few examples science has described.
Happily I’m busy with fun things, but seriously, you should spend some time studying this topic since you have a very deep and very false conviction. From over here it looks like your hatred of religion is clouding your judgment and capacity for understanding a complex and interesting topic clearly. Anyhow good luck, I’m off to do fun things, too busy to try to help here, but you should know that until you work out a way to analyze dispassionately, and work through the analyses by scholars in the field, you’ll be in the same boat as the religious people you’re criticizing - driven by base emotion, refusing to consider facts that would falsity your cherished and passionately held beliefs, and so over confident in those beliefs that you’re coming off as being as faithful and willfully ignorant as a fundamentalist.
There’s a bit of confusion here between “brain” and “mind.”
The brain is not tabula rasa at birth. Breathing, crying, nursing: these are all built-in behaviours that don’t need to be taught. Do those behaviours, the base, instinctual behaviours of the brain, belong to the “mind?” If you call the mind “non-existent” at birth, then I imagine you’ll say that those behaviours are not part of the mind.
There are similar built-in circuitry that exists in human brains, which predispose humans to storytelling, to confirmation bias, to all sorts of irrational behaviours. These are so predominant across all cultures that it’s evident that they’re not cultural things, but are actually coded into the common human DNA.
You seem to be interpreting @nemomen’s comment to be saying that the invention of gods is part of the mind, the consciousness, the stuff that is taught. The way I’m reading it, he seems to be claiming that it is part of the underlying structure, the evolved irrationality, the stuff that exists out of the womb. Yes, those built-in behaviours can be overridden, with effort and training, but most people don’t get that training.
A group of humans, without the knowledge to test and explain their observations using the scientific method, will invent stories to explain why the sun comes up each morning, and the simplest story is that it does so through the intervention of a supernatural force. It’s only once you have a lot more knowledge that it becomes obvious that the Earth is spinning and moving around the sun, not the other way around.
Speaking as an atheist, raised by atheist parents, in an extremely secular society: wrong again. I will never cease to be interested in trying to figure out exactly why people believe that bullshit.
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[1] Unless you’re using idiosyncratic personal definitions in order to justify your statement. In which case you aren’t wrong, just tedious.
Admins: Please allow me to re-iterate my previous post, which was removed, in what I hope to be a more boing boing-friendly manner. I was glib, for comedic purposes, and I suppose that offends some people.
It is quite logical for Mark Zuckerberg to become a deist…life has been good to him, after all…really, really, extraordinarily good, beyond any expectation he may have ever had, growing up…this sort of extreme good fortune might be taken for granted by a less thoughtful sort of person, and dismissed out of hand.
Not so, with our Mark…he’s given it some real thought, and come to the conclusion that he can’t explain it…clearly, something out there seems to likes him.
But is it true faith, or spiritual dilettantism? What if he were to become un-fortunate, like Job…what if divine providence no longer smiled upon him? Would he still be a deist, even when things weren’t going his way? Isn’t that the true test of faith?
So, why doesn’t that same god like people who have been dedicated to him all their lives, people who are way more faithful, as much as you think god likes MZ? Based on your theory, the wealthy are especially beloved of god. Trump, for instance, and his cabinet of rich kleoptocrats. Whereas the opposite seems to be true of the the poor, even the most devout. If MZ’s weath is a sign that god must like them, then the poverty of the faithful must be a sign that god doesn’t like them. You can’t have it both ways.
Is not the vast wealth inequity in the US and around the world more consistent with no god (or an evil god) than with the idea of a god who rewards the faithful?
You brought it up. But, I was going more off your flagged post, than subsequent post I clicked on. I have no idea why becoming a deist would make sense if life has been good to him. I don’t understand why you would connect an impersonal god to that.
You don’t even need to be a recovering Catholic, just someone who cares about Western intellectual and artistic history. Without some understanding of what the Catholic Church was all about, hundreds of years of Western achievement are just above averagely decorative wallpaper and some nice tunes.
Make no mistake, I’m not saying that myself, it’s just that many thousands of people get their news and other media almost exclusively from FB…I guess even more surprising is that Zuck thinks that anyone gives a rat’s ass about what he believes on his own time, whether it’s the Torah or the Sunday comics.
Sadly obvious what you meant now, in hindsight.
