RE: Tell me, what makes this wrong.
July 21, 2025 at 1:08 pm
(This post was last modified: July 21, 2025 at 1:13 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Consider the set of possible beliefs about how the world ought to be. These beliefs are almost uniformly untrue as a matter of circumstantial fact, and their very existence makes little sense in any other context. More often, they are aspirational goals - and just as often, those who hold them believe they can be the product of critical thought.
Unless they're all wrong about everything all the time....then we have to allow that religious thought, and this is one of the defining categories of religious ideation, could be rational - could be the product of a critical examination. If or when it isn't, that's not because it's religious but because a particular religion has put in the extra work to be extra silly. Most of the time, when we talk about religion in the context of critical thought, we're actually discussing superstition.
I'll use the politics of climate change as an example of a related dynamic. There are people who are very much against climate change regulations - despite being very well aware of and very concerned by the impacts of climate change. They believe that no -effective- climate change laws could be crafted without baking in authoritarian tyranny, cruelty, and human misery. Insomuch as they believe the world should not be that way, that we should not empower governments to make it so - they may be wrong..and I say may here genuinely......but it's not an explicitly irrational belief or a belief that is antithetical to critical thought.
Unless they're all wrong about everything all the time....then we have to allow that religious thought, and this is one of the defining categories of religious ideation, could be rational - could be the product of a critical examination. If or when it isn't, that's not because it's religious but because a particular religion has put in the extra work to be extra silly. Most of the time, when we talk about religion in the context of critical thought, we're actually discussing superstition.
I'll use the politics of climate change as an example of a related dynamic. There are people who are very much against climate change regulations - despite being very well aware of and very concerned by the impacts of climate change. They believe that no -effective- climate change laws could be crafted without baking in authoritarian tyranny, cruelty, and human misery. Insomuch as they believe the world should not be that way, that we should not empower governments to make it so - they may be wrong..and I say may here genuinely......but it's not an explicitly irrational belief or a belief that is antithetical to critical thought.
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