Doesn't that kinda make Scar correct in his dismissal of Mufasa and Simba and make him the good guy? And yes I'm aware some societies had adoptable heirs, like the Roman emperors.
You're viewing a single comment thread. View all comments, or full comment thread.
Comments (46)
sorted by:
Religion ends up being a corrupting influence to the Left, the same way every totalitarian ideology does. Frankly, it's what happened to a lot of atheists.
I always considered the atheists who adopted Leftism to (as many have pointed out) swapped one religion for another. In the atheist cultural experience, you would say these people didn't engage in "Deconversion".
Deconversion is the actual process of truly leaving all religious behavior and magical thinking. It is a point where I would agree with the edge lords on Reddit that if someone claimed they were an atheist and found God, it's because they weren't really an atheist because they didn't engage in deconversion.
What that really looks like is that you genuinely don't replace God with anything, you drop the concept altogether. You don't search for a replacement, because you don't actually need one at all. You have to actually place the mantel of moral responsibility onto yourself and deal with it in an appropriate manner.
But, because Leftists always shirk responsibility, particularly moral responsibility to deontological assertions and historical meta-narratives, they never actually de-convert from religious thinking. In fact, they engage in worse magical thinking than some of the worst religious zealots. They are the ones dragging Carrie into the closet.
Ironically, only an atheist would be so narcissistic and delusional to think such a thing is possible.
Psychology is filled with concepts and names of fundamental human mental traits that are magic thinking in all its forms, and while it doesn't name drop religion specifically it sets all the foundations for how religion comes to be. The Fundamental Attribution Error and Loci of Control are two that comes to mind immediately, and I'm sure I could pull more if given a refresher (its been a long time, I'm losing my education from disuse).
It is inherently anti-science to think such a thing is possible, because it denies Psychology as a whole to basically say "nu uh I'm more special." Which is the same traits they decry in religious folks.
Its in this way they leave themselves so open to that Leftist indoctrination, because they keep cutting off the branches (religion and God) while ignoring the roots (human instincts) that are easily hijacked once those branches are out of the way. Even worse, because they think themselves above it and absolved of the "silly superstitions" they pay less attention to those roots and their effects.
Not sure why you're trying to go so hard at me, but w/e.
The fact that they are errors in thinking is why you don't actually have to have them. Religions and magical thinking aren't requirements for being human, they are merely and outgrowth of the how the human brain tends to work. I don't see correcting attribution errors as an inhuman act.
I feel like your argument wouldn't make sense when applied towards religion rather than away from it. Couldn't you say the exact same thing about human behaviors regarding sex or violence, and that claiming there might be a need to control them is also anti-human?
I don't think it's particularly anti-human to ask people to discipline themselves.
That wasn't meant to be a go at you, just atheism in general. You weren't speaking as yourself so my response wasn't at yourself but the concepts as a whole.
I didn't intend personal offense with it, and you know I would own that if I did.
The inhumanity is in thinking you are capable of it. Its ascribing that your conscious mind is superior to the subconscious and that you are capable of wrangling your mind (the thing you use to have such thoughts) to your will.
Its ironically magical thinking itself to think that because you think "I am free of these silly errors" means you actually are, when many of those silly errors are designed by your brain to make you never even aware you are making them in the first place. Your brain loves to straight delete data and your perception of reality if it sense you might be wrong about something, and it will emotionally invest you in something to keep that hidden.
That's why its such an insidious organ and you must be on constant vigilance against its machinations. My issue with what you said was that in thinking you can actually leave all that behind, instead of being a constant lifelong struggle of discipline, much like an alcoholic who is never truly "free" but rather just sober today.
Discipline is the correct choice, but its anti-human to say that your process can actually purge you of things that are inherently human, not simply religious failings.
No problem, no offense taken.
And yeah, I think we're actually on the same page. There's no way to purge that. I definitely think there's many political philosophies that claim that, but all of them are false. You can't get away from magical thinking, you're going to do it, but you have to be vigilant enough to recognize it when it happens, correct for it when it does, and hopefully keep yourself from doing it too often.
That's really what I mean when I say "taking the mantel of responsibility onto yourself" as part of the Deconversion process. You can never off-load that responsibility ever again. You must permanently hold that responsibility for your mind going forward, otherwise it's merely an abdication of responsibility. You can't pass it to someone else and just trust an institution or authority to handle that responsibility for you.
It's a bit of a curse. You "bit the apple", as it were. You can never go back, and you're also never finished.