I’d bet he’s planning on running for office. And needs to do this to pander to the fly-over states.
10 Likes
This has always been something of a distinction without difference for the purposes of conversations about conversions and perceptions.
Why use the word “friendlier” if there’s no social component.
I don’t believe in the existance of god, but I believe in the existence of a sterile test-tube Atheism even less.
3 Likes
Atheism has lost social cohesive value over time
Zuck has devoted his life to analyzing and abstracting social cohesion.
I believe he read something by someone smarter than him, but didn’t get it.
6 Likes
There is only one word that I can think of at the moment:
Pandering.
7 Likes
I’m unable to string together words into a meaningful sentence that would represent just how little I care about his religiosity. Come on BB, entertain me.
13 Likes
Which is not what that bit of discussion was about. That’s about whether there’s a “social cohesive value” in Atheism, as you put it. I don’t think that was there. Aside from in the loosest sense (and that’s still there). Where that largely seemed to come from was the whole “movement Atheism”/New Atheism thing. Where you had a vocal, focused movement with an explicit (and quixotic) goal of defeating or diminishing religion. Which worked fine if you were into that or involved. But for those Atheists (like myself) who failed to see the point (or failed to fit the crowd) being excluded and getting nothing but frustrated. So Social Cohesion for the smaller group directly involved. Social division for the rest of us.
A fair lot of that material/movement has been shot through with out and out misogyny. Poor arguments against religion that are borrowed from old anti-catholic ethnic arguments. And a huge amount of anti-arab/muslim bias. It was essentially a boys club where a huge number of Atheists felt disinterested, and unwelcome. And that seems to be what’s causing it to collapse.
In terms of the different approaches to Atheism rising in its place. They’re friendlier because they’re friendlier. More accepting of different groups, more accepting of different approaches, more willing to work with other groups including Religious ones. And yes more open to women and brown people. And it doesn’t lack for social elements. The number of Atheist meet ups. Small scale, local events. Atheist involvement or contribution in unrelated events (conventions and political events etc). I’ve seen or been invited to the last 5 years or so is far, far more than I ever saw in the past. Actual communities doing things communities do. Where they live. As opposed to flying cross country to the years one big event for your movement. And I’ve noticed larger Atheist components to various social justice and political causes. As well as a rise in Atheists actually fighting for their own civil rights through the courts and political campaigning. Often along with other groups that have cause for concern in that direction.
There’s plenty going on. Its just less of a single large, homogeneous group with a single adversarial goal.
6 Likes
Y[quote=“Ryuthrowsstuff, post:19, topic:92102”]
Prosperity Gospel is an explicitly Protestant Christian movement. And its pitch rather directly at those who are not rich. Pray this way and god will make you rich.
[/quote]
I’m just going off the Wikipedia entry (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology); and there is definitely a strong validation for people who are already rich. Prosperity theology is the means by which the very rich can make sense of their good fortunes (Camels and eyes of needles and all that).
ETA: my other point isn’t that Zuckerberg is explicitly adhering to the specific doctrine of prosperity theology, but rather that it is a very popular and influential movement in the US. Also, even if/though religiosity inversely correlates with education and income, that doesn’t imply or predict an absence of religion among the ultra-wealthy.
1 Like
It’s kind of a big step out from categorizing oneself as “Atheist.”
And usually it’s not to a “religion is important” phase. It’s conversion. To an actual denomination. (Leah Libresco’s loud and largely incoherent conversion to Catholicism comes to mind.)
So, I’d go with Zuck having always being “Agnostic” and now he’s just “Less Agnostic”/“More Spiritual”. When it comes to the Religion box, you can’t just check “Yes”.
5 Likes
It worked for Obama.
2 Likes
it’s bad PR to not be religious. 3% of the population identifies as atheist and they are the most detested group in america. you’d get more sympathy if you were a nazi puppy stomper.
12 Likes
At which point the Athebros and Dawkins/Harris/Maher Fanboys wring their hands and collectively declare “But atheism is simply the lack of belief in deity/deities…” to shut down the convo, because obvs. Islam and Feminism represent the most dangerous threat to everything known to (white)mankind.
5 Likes
my sentiments exactly. politics in the US means you have to lie or mislead or otherwise pander to help increase public opinion quotients -
looking directly at the words to discern the message:
Q: Aren’t you Atheist?
A: No.
What he really is saying:
Don’t try to classify me by your asinine thought systems, meat-bag. I identify as what I am, not what I appear to be, as any proper individualist should.
I was raised Jewish…
What he really is saying:
Here’s a fun factoid, I have had religion in my life in the past. You can relate, no? Haven’t you had religion in your life before, reader? Hey! We have something in common. I bet you kinda like me 
…and then I went through a period where I questioned things, …
What he really is saying:
but now I believe religion is very important.
What he really is saying:
With the election of Drumpf, I realise the importance of this block of voters who will probably not be dead by the time I am ready to purchase a public office. Religion is important, sort of. I must claim it as a sense of public-facing morality to help gain sway over the pollgoers who value the level of faith an individual has, not as a real thing but more of an unwritten (or perhaps, written) KPI of sorts.
List of things he did not say, is not saying, which may be important to point out to the casual onlooker:
- There is one god, there is a god, I believe in said god, and this belief governs my life and livelihood, my speech patterns and decision making abilities.
- God created the world, the internet, me, my wife, you, and a bunch of other shit. Existence is not a cosmic accident, and neither are my words
- Jesus is the product of god fucking a human girl, is ergo the son of god and has/had magic powers, will one day come back to this plane of existence to kill all humans
- I have read the bible and torah and believe the books/scrolls to be gospel, the word of aforementioned god
- I believe in afterlife and that my actions in this plane of existence will affect my standing or caste in said afterlife
- I believe in other such improbabilities, such as sentient races with wings who give a shit about humans for some reason
What is odd to me is that people worship and revere wealthy people. I just don’t get it. What makes this skinny white boy worthy of your attention? He made a largely useless and quasi-entertaining piece of software that generates lots of profits. So what? The real impressive thing he’s done is made people listen to him (kinda like some other guy we know on the internet who will have a new job in a few days…)
18 Likes
If he embraces Judaism is he going to shut facebook down on the sabbath like Chik-Fil-A?
7 Likes
Sure. And there’s a distinct incentive for Churches to attract the wealthy to their congregations. To provide “proof” that it works. But that isn’t the main thrust of the theological argument. Nor the main body of membership, or target of donation drives.
Prosperity is large and influential in the evangelical scene. The whole evangelical movement has out sized influence and visibility. But its actually a fairly small portion of the American religious community. Accurate or consistent numbers can be rough to find. Especially because Evangelicals tend to get rolled into “Protestantism” more generally. And we’ve got a tendency to roll all Christian denominations together despite vast differences in theology and political outlook. But IIRC the rough breakdown is Catholics are the largest ~25%, followed by an ever shifting 2-4 position for your various “nones” rolled together (Athiest Agnostic, Non-affiliated, no religion etc), Mormons and Mainline Protestant denominations (taken together or listed separately behind one of the others). The Evangelical and other fundamentalist Protestant Denominations (including weirdly non-denominational) tend to fill out the low end of the Christian demographic lists. Followed by Jews and other non Christian Faiths. Even if you take the largest estimates of Evengelicalism as whole, which place them as larger than Catholics when taken together. You’re sill looking at most at 1/4 of Americans. Non-Evangelical Christians (taken together) still outnumber them. So prosperity is an influential portion of that. You can hardly take it as representative of religion as a whole. Or even Christianity as a whole. Though it seems to be increasingly representative of Evangelical/Fundementalist Christianity as a whole.
Additionally Prosperity, as well as Evangelical/Fundementalist Christianity as a whole tends to be most popular in the Deep South and portions of the Midwest. Essentially our poorest states. And I seem to remember studies and demo information from election polling and the census showing those religious blocks are on the whole less wealthy than the national average.
But its still not a religious for or predicated on the wealthy. Its the lotto with Jesus. It relies on and feeds off of those who need or want more. Which is the big problem with it. Its loaded down with scams and grifters. There’s a reason most of your disgraced 90’s televangelists have glommed onto it (together with Survivalist shit).
Not my point at all. Your comment implied that being religious was a privilege of the wealthy. Or wealth would lead to religiosity. Everything we know of the subject indicates the opposite. You’re talking about social trends, demographics. Its never going to be a clear cause and effect leading to a total absence of religiosity among a certain group. But as it stands, probably due to greater access to education and less need for charitable and community support. There is clearly a greater absence of religion among the generally wealthier.
Are in my experience more likely to start dismissively mocking you to your face. Then escalate to shouting. Or try some pick up artist “moves” on your sister.
7 Likes
There are also many people who believe that Zuckerberg’s opinions matter more than those of the average person because he has acquired pieces of magical paper - so, it takes all types.
All the Artificial Intelligence talk these days has gotten me rethinking some big things and I wonder if the same is true for Mr. Zuckerberg.
Going back to the famous “Cat Paper” where a neural network ‘discovered’ the pattern ‘cat’ in YouTube stills without being told that such a thing exists. Or the hyperdimensional vector mappings that are used to establish the meaning of a word relative to every other word in that language… mappings that reveal archetypical categories like ‘gender’ and ‘magnitude’.
This all feels like the abstract reasoned space that biological intelligence first encountered long ago and which gained reciprocal strength as language allowed us to compare our personal experiences. Recorded history allowed that conversation to extend through time.
It may be dismissed as inductive reasoning, but those collective experiences leave a residue of some greater power that exerted it’s sway over all of us, in the shared understandings of general concepts like time, gender, cycle, birth, death. Some schools of thought (Daoism, Yoga, etc) considered these as energies like prana, qi, yin and yang. Other peoples used more material means of representing these concepts in mythological stories or god-persona like the various gods of death or the archetypical fathers and mothers of creation.
This is not to say that these other-worldly concepts necessarily have some truth to them. But from what I know about Facebook and how it aims to study human emotion and interaction, it may be a psychological necessity that the man in charge of that kingdom have some sense of a greater power at work.
If I were a Christian, I would describe Prosperity Theology as Satanic. It’s a near perfect inversion of Jesus’ supposed message.
13 Likes
And this is the thing that too many people tend to miss. Secularism isn’t about everyone being an atheist or humanist. It’s about the freedom to decide that for oneself and to allow others the same luxury. There is a very good reason the first amendment covers what it does.
17 Likes
I think one of the big problems has been that deconverted atheists often carry a lot of the assumptions of their earlier beliefs with them. Ex-Evangelicals can be very dogmatic and evangelistic about the Truth, for example. There’s also a tendency to have prominent spokespersons (almost exclusively men) who proclaim atheism as a movement, as you mentioned. Rather than movement Atheism/New Atheism, I call it evangelistic Atheism – it’s not enough to critique problematic parts of religions, other people need to come to you and accept your view.
One thing I do respect is that they are open and clear about what they believe; many religious people claim to have the one truth, so it isn’t particularly divisive to air your view that they’re all wrong in this issue. I also don’t think saying that there are inherent problems with particular religions or religion in general should be a problem; I can respect people with different views and advocate for their rights without having to say that I believe those views are harmless. Again, this is not something that makes evangelistic Atheism different from many religious groups.
I kind of think that if there is no god, it doesn’t matter so very much what someone believes or doesn’t believe, and it matters quite a lot that you are actually living a life that benefits others. For that reason, I don’t make a big deal about being separate from religious people, and reject the idea that this division is the one that really matters. Some religious people believe that we are incompatible because I don’t believe in their god. By treating people normally whatever their beliefs, being married to a religious person and living with others, I am quietly proving these ideas to be wrong.
What I don’t get is why he can’t be religious but not spiritual, especially as a Jewish person.
What metric would you use to say that atheists are more detested than Muslims in America? This claim seems to be repeated quite a bit without a lot of evidence.
3 Likes
