Now, I find it very rare to meet anyone, of whatever background, who admits to believing in personal immortality. Still, I think it quite likely that if you asked everyone the question and put pencil and paper in hands, a fairly large number (I am not so free with my percentages as Mr. Dark) would admit the possibility that after death there might be ‘something’. The point Mr. Dark has missed is that the belief, such as it is, hasn't the actuality it had for our forefathers. Never, literally never in recent years, have I met anyone who gave me the impression of believing in the next world as firmly as he believed in the existence of, for instance, Australia. Belief in the next world does not influence conduct as it would if it were genuine. With that endless existence beyond death to look forward to, how trivial our lives here would seem! Most Christians profess to believe in Hell. Yet have you ever met a Christian who seemed as afraid of Hell as he was of cancer? (George Orwell, “As I Please,”
It isn’t the main point of the article but the degree to which plea bargaining is permitted in the US system always disturbs me. Along with the savage sentences for crimes and often useless defence lawyers it seems like an engine for injustice. (It never used to be a thing in the UK but I believe that has changed in recent years).
One thing that's both difficult and interesting to me about this (and that I don't have a good solution for) is the separation of definitions of "christian" in ways that makes sense. On one hand we have what we can call "nominal" christians - people who would at minimum check a box indicating they identify most with christianity out of a list of a bunch of potential religions. On the other hand you have any definition you might want to set that makes any demands greater than that.
The atheist/agnostic thoughtsphere very, very rarely draws any distinction between the former and the latter. Surprisingly often I'll get into an argument where an atheist doesn't like some christien belief or another and relates that he or she has a friend, a very serious Christian, who in fact does not believe in any of the supernatural stuff and thinks that in all cases any rule or guideline of the bible can stand if an only if it doesn't disagree substantially with society. And they are legitimately confused when you point out that there's perhaps a substantial difference between a belief that has any practical implications at all and one that doesn't.
There's a comedian named Pete Holmes who runs a podcast that gets into various religious/spiritual topics a fair bit. He is a fairly apostate Christian - like his backstory is that he got married young, the marriage didn't go well, and in the fallout from that he stopped believing in most of the claims of Christianity. But he at least at some point during the era I listed to his podcast would have still described himself as Christian because he felt like he still sprang from that culture. His phrase for this was that he was "culturally christian", essentially that he still felt some resonance for the trappings of the thing while not substantially believing in it.
I want to have better tools for actually quantifying these differences, but it's harder than it sounds. "Fundamentalist" is mostly read (and broadly used) as a slur - one very common use of the word, despite it's technical definition, is to make Christians who believe any of the bible is binding sound like redneck terrorists. And mainline sounds enough like "mainstream" and is uncommon enough in use in christian/church circles that I'm really unconfident how confounded measurements using that term are.
One sort of imperfect, better-than-nothing solution is to actually deliniate by behavior - i.e. things like looking at church attendence. Famously when you define Christian as "actually shows up to church fairly often", you find Christians suddenly outperform the living hell out of everyone else on metrics like divorce, and stuff like that. I'd be curious to hear takes on other things that work this way - different ways of quantifying "is Christian" that paint different pictures, whether for the better or for the worse.
It's anecdotal, but my experience in court is that relatively few Muslims are willing to swear on the Qur'an and then lie. I've seen a couple swear on the bible (in one instance, in spite of the fact his being Muslim was a relevant part of his evidence, which he ironically also chose to give whilst drunk), and several affirm, but I can only recall one time where I've seen someone swear on a Qu'ran then perjure himself.
This isn't necessarily strong evidence of religious belief though; communal shame, or slightly skew moral codes, could lead to similar results.
I believe in G-d's immortality, and the soul is only immortal inasmuch as it is part of G-d. Not sure what that counts as. I do believe in the resurrection of the dead, but after reading Rasag, I have basically settled into "details are impossible to figure out."
Although modern Protestantism (cultural and actual) tends to see Catholicism as being more severe than other religions, except evangelicals m, historically many Protestants believed Catholicism to be too lax. After all a man could forgive your sins, it wasn’t between you and God - who may or may not be forgiving. It’s not all that surprising then that Northern Europeans, a staid bunch compared to Mediterraneans, adopted severe Protestantism - or in the case of Ireland, a pretty depressing Catholicism.
It isn’t the main point of the article but the degree to which plea bargaining is permitted in the US system always disturbs me. Along with the savage sentences for crimes and often useless defence lawyers it seems like an engine for injustice. (It never used to be a thing in the UK but I believe that has changed in recent years).
One thing that's both difficult and interesting to me about this (and that I don't have a good solution for) is the separation of definitions of "christian" in ways that makes sense. On one hand we have what we can call "nominal" christians - people who would at minimum check a box indicating they identify most with christianity out of a list of a bunch of potential religions. On the other hand you have any definition you might want to set that makes any demands greater than that.
The atheist/agnostic thoughtsphere very, very rarely draws any distinction between the former and the latter. Surprisingly often I'll get into an argument where an atheist doesn't like some christien belief or another and relates that he or she has a friend, a very serious Christian, who in fact does not believe in any of the supernatural stuff and thinks that in all cases any rule or guideline of the bible can stand if an only if it doesn't disagree substantially with society. And they are legitimately confused when you point out that there's perhaps a substantial difference between a belief that has any practical implications at all and one that doesn't.
There's a comedian named Pete Holmes who runs a podcast that gets into various religious/spiritual topics a fair bit. He is a fairly apostate Christian - like his backstory is that he got married young, the marriage didn't go well, and in the fallout from that he stopped believing in most of the claims of Christianity. But he at least at some point during the era I listed to his podcast would have still described himself as Christian because he felt like he still sprang from that culture. His phrase for this was that he was "culturally christian", essentially that he still felt some resonance for the trappings of the thing while not substantially believing in it.
I want to have better tools for actually quantifying these differences, but it's harder than it sounds. "Fundamentalist" is mostly read (and broadly used) as a slur - one very common use of the word, despite it's technical definition, is to make Christians who believe any of the bible is binding sound like redneck terrorists. And mainline sounds enough like "mainstream" and is uncommon enough in use in christian/church circles that I'm really unconfident how confounded measurements using that term are.
One sort of imperfect, better-than-nothing solution is to actually deliniate by behavior - i.e. things like looking at church attendence. Famously when you define Christian as "actually shows up to church fairly often", you find Christians suddenly outperform the living hell out of everyone else on metrics like divorce, and stuff like that. I'd be curious to hear takes on other things that work this way - different ways of quantifying "is Christian" that paint different pictures, whether for the better or for the worse.
It's anecdotal, but my experience in court is that relatively few Muslims are willing to swear on the Qur'an and then lie. I've seen a couple swear on the bible (in one instance, in spite of the fact his being Muslim was a relevant part of his evidence, which he ironically also chose to give whilst drunk), and several affirm, but I can only recall one time where I've seen someone swear on a Qu'ran then perjure himself.
This isn't necessarily strong evidence of religious belief though; communal shame, or slightly skew moral codes, could lead to similar results.
The guy who runs the local mosque collects Zakat, and from what I can tell he has spent every penny on building his own property empire.
This book I’m reading is about exactly this: How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others https://a.co/d/guWvSDM
It's an interesting comparison.
I believe in G-d's immortality, and the soul is only immortal inasmuch as it is part of G-d. Not sure what that counts as. I do believe in the resurrection of the dead, but after reading Rasag, I have basically settled into "details are impossible to figure out."
Although modern Protestantism (cultural and actual) tends to see Catholicism as being more severe than other religions, except evangelicals m, historically many Protestants believed Catholicism to be too lax. After all a man could forgive your sins, it wasn’t between you and God - who may or may not be forgiving. It’s not all that surprising then that Northern Europeans, a staid bunch compared to Mediterraneans, adopted severe Protestantism - or in the case of Ireland, a pretty depressing Catholicism.
Interesting analysis. As a former Super-Catholic (12 years of Catholic school), I think the main thing is that it is a criminal organization. https://www.mattball.org/2023/04/the-catholic-church-is-criminal.html