The Religious Void

[The Grand Nudger]

They did, and from that incubator of fundie christendom, we got gifted trumpism.

[John 6IX Breezy]

And do you believe these specific Trump supporters are now secular or are they still within that incubator of fundie christendom?

[Apollo]

A brief thought for discussion:

It's not difficult to find religious behavior in nonreligious places. The US elections is a recent example of how easily cult-like and religious undertones begin to emerge in politics and otherwise secular groups. We are fundamentally religious creatures, and seem to default towards this mode of thinking when gathered too strongly into groups.

My question is this:

Is it better to have a well defined religious structure in which religious activities can exist rather than no structure at all; and does that successfully deminish religious behavior elsewhere?

In my own experience, being raised Christian does seem to stop me from having religious affiliation with other groups like politics. And I generally find it odd when I meet a Christian that is religiously political.

I think you may have this other way around.  We humans as social animals have certain group characteristics and behaviors which lead to forming various cultures and rituals.  This comes first.  Religion comes later.  Religion simply rides on existing waves of social practices and morph our social frameworks according its desired state of conformance abidance. 

This is why words like congregation, community, charity, commune, kinship etc seem to have "religious" connotations. But in reality as social animals, cooperation, social altruism, and friendship etc give rise to such social practices and have always been part of our evolutionary past in various different forms.

Fact of the matter is that anytime you'd have number of people living under some kind of group arrangement, you'll end up having some rules and hierarchy, and temperamental resistance and conflicts, as well, agreements to them. That's just group dynamic.

[The Grand Nudger]

Everything we do builds on basic blocks - the difference with respect to a religion is in the nature of the assertions as apprehended by the holder.

You and I and John and Uncle Ogg all live(d) in societies, and we may exist in varying degrees of assent to or conformity in our societies - but a religious belief is inviolable. It is truer than true, and we all agree with it. An american may be a person who is attached to america and agree with her principles. A religious american does not entertain the contrapositive assertion -unamerica, as being capable of being true™.

We can add america to my list of sacred-alikes to explore, if we like. My preferred future, and the one I work towards and hope to make true, is the united states of a greener earth. When you roll that around in your mouth and consider what you may have gleaned from conversations with me over the years - it becomes easy to see why I can't be argued out of it.

[John 6IX Breezy]

We humans as social animals have certain group characteristics and behaviors which lead to forming various cultures and rituals.  This comes first.  Religion comes later. 

Within a naturalistic perspective, you don't think it makes more sense for the two to co-evolve? That ritualistic behavior evolved within a ritualistic system, which evolved because of ritualistic behavior? If rituals emerged first and religion hijacked it, what biological or psychological role do rituals play in our evolution that precedes religion?

[Apollo]

We humans as social animals have certain group characteristics and behaviors which lead to forming various cultures and rituals.  This comes first.  Religion comes later. 

Within a naturalistic perspective, you don't think it makes more sense for the two to co-evolve? That ritualistic behavior evolved within a ritualistic system, which evolved because of ritualistic behavior? If rituals emerged first and religion hijacked it, what biological or psychological role do rituals play in our evolution that precedes religion?

Rituals have many uses.  It's excellent way to propagate good behavior and shun the bad one.  It's also a great way to pass on knowledge, antiquates, acceptable behavior in a group setting to younger generation without having to go through lengthy, resource (time, energy) consuming routines or verbal lessons. Rituals are also a great way to signal intent or trust among others.

Imagine a scenario of a father taking his son to a hunting party for the first time in Savannah.  A new member in the hunting party poses a risk as he may not know how to properly hunt or swarm the animal for hunting and can cause loss or even injury to others –– The tribe may have a ritual of initiation where hunting party members are introduced to the young boy, as well as routines to signal to the boy how to behave and respect those who are accepting him as trustworthy participant even though this is his first time.  To encourage the boy to work diligently and fetch more food and not be a free loader, they may even come up with a ritual to celebrate his first kill as reward.  To promote good behavior, they may introduce tradition that the first kill should be presented to the elder of the tribe in a ceremony to signal to the boy hierarchal respect expected of him, as well as, signaling to the elders of the tribe that the boy is one of them and not a rebel.

There could be gazillions other scenarios where rituals are useful to build a coherent, conforming society among various members of the group. These rituals are born out of necessity of survival. They are solutions to common social survival problems living in a group and are passed on generation by generation.  As time passed on, humans found new effective ways to do this and religion was just one such way.

[The Grand Nudger]

And do you believe these specific Trump supporters are now secular or are they still within that incubator of fundie christendom?

I missed this, sorry.  I expect to find a similar refocus and reorganization of christian america's place in society following their disappointment with Trump.  They carefully manicured an escape hatch from day one with their flawed vessel bullshit.

-as you well know.

[Mister Agenda]

But most structured religions - the Catholic and Anglican churches, Islam, Presbyterians and Baptists, to name a few - obviously have no compunctions about engaging in politics.

Hmm I'm not necessarily suggesting that religious people and institutions are not involved in politics. Rather, whether the particular kind of involvement people have is religious in nature.

For example, the psychologist Jonathan Haidt described some campus protests that occur when conservative speakers are invited to be religious. The protesters behave as if the campus grounds were sacred, and the speakers are impure, and their presence threatens the holiness of the place. Likewise, some Trump supporters do have an uncanny cult-like attitude towards the politician.

So the question is whether having an actual religious outlet prevents this kind of religious behavior in otherwise secular places (not just politics).

As you seem to recognize, the tendency of American Evangelicals to believe anything Trump says despite any factual evidence otherwise and to also be antivaxxers suggests to me that at least for that particular subgroup of Christians, their religion does not inoculate them at all from political cult-like behavior. If anything it seems to make them more susceptible.

[The Grand Nudger]

One of the biggest issues with this comparison is, ofc, that religious people do not necessarily see that there is any difference between the religious and the secular (or that there should be, for that matter). It's not an off on either or proposition. They have beliefs about the sacred that unite them into a moral community - full stop. More like a set of tools that they use more or less depending on their aims and how effective those tools have been at a given moment.

If christians had succeeded in creating a groundswell of consequential belief through evangelism, they'd never have needed to attempt to capture government. There was an attempt to do so, and religiosity in the in group went up - but outside of that the same period saw the rise of the nones and the attached perception of the religious that they were "losing their country".

-if we really wanted to do a deep dive, it's not at all difficult to see how the various strands of propaganda that we call trumpism came to service the communities that would form it's base. Why common cause was made between white supremacists, evangelical christians, and 1%ers. For the evangelicals part, they found themselves as kingmaker (a stunning reversal of perceived fortune) and without that normalizing and credible block a coalition of overt racists and rich people weren't going to win any us elections. There was plenty of free market scientific racist crossover between the groups already, obvs, having been primed in the obama years. The real tragedy (for the us and for christianity) is how utterly predictable and right on the surface all of this had been. It was impossible not to see it for any reason other than not wanting to.

Plenty of us still don't.

[John 6IX Breezy]

As you seem to recognize, the tendency of American Evangelicals to believe anything Trump says despite any factual evidence otherwise and to also be antivaxxers suggests to me that at least for that particular subgroup of Christians, their religion does not inoculate them at all from political cult-like behavior.

I'm curious as to why you included antivaxxer in your description. Insofar as any Christian is an antivaxxer, the reasons for it seem to align with my theory. It is an over-allocation of trust in Christianity, that leads to a deficit of trust in other entities such as science or governments. My guess is that any overlap that might exist between them and Trump supporters, is likely due to Trump championing a mistrust in science and government, despite him being in government.