I’ve been looking into a tradition for the last few years that died out nearly 1,500 years ago that has me wondering the opposite.
How in the present day with the clear trajectory of science and technology we are currently working on do we not realize this ancient and relatively well known text isn’t some mystical mumbo jumbo but is straight up dishing on the nature of our reality?
I think there’s a stubbornness of thought that exists among most humans regarding what they think they know about life which blinds both the religious and non-religious.
I mean, in this day and age why isn’t [insert what I know to be true] accepted by [everyone who I perceive to be wrong]. Hegel leads to another Russian smart man who argues a bunch of it might be due to this idea of perezhivanie; how we make sense of what is happening (particularly dramatic events) through our cognition, our emotions and filtered through our needs.
How we make sense of stuff leads to how we behave/believe. This is impacted by our social environment, how we are brought up, our experiences, and our reasoning of those experiences.
It’s why it is argued that information alone will never change someone’s mind about something, it needs to be attached to an emotion and an experience to unpack.
There are lots of reasons. Some people want answers for questions that we don’t have scientific answers for yet, or that science can’t possibly answer.
Some people want to use a framework to justify their behavior.
Some people are scared or disgusted by the implications of our knowledge, and they want it to be something different.
Some people want to manipulate others.
There are many religions because there are many reason why they exist.
questions that we don’t have scientific answers for yet, or that science can’t possibly answer
I’ll be the Devil’s advocate for this one and say that there are very few questions that science can’t legitimately answer to any degree, like what consciousness is. But for others like why the universe became what it is today and how it works, it’s just not a satisfying answer for someone who has no interest or hasn’t studied physics and chemistry to a reasonable degree. Like, the way that we can partly explain a lot of what goes on from the flow of energy or that life’s purpose is to reproduce in biology, what a let down of an answer that is for someone who was promised a grandiose explanation of everything.
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I can see why people retreat back to religion for these answers. And tangentially, this is why I think we need more people like Carl Sagan who can genuinely paint our understanding of the natural world in a more awe-inspiring way for the average person without becoming a meme themselves like some of these other celebrities.
Science can’t answer any “why.” It can explain how and what, but it can’t give meaning. If someone thinks it does give meaning, they have turned it into a religion.
I’m well aware but I don’t mean why as in “why it is that it is”, but why as in how we got to where we are. “Why is the world round?” (spherical for the pedantics amongst us) is perfectly answerable by Science and it’s not an existential question.
One problem is trying to discern people who have truly religious beliefs, vs. people that are lazy lairs.
I think Trump supporters that talk of him being chosen by God are lazy lairs. They have a racist world view, can’t justify it, so bring God into the argument. They have no real interest into looking deeply at questions or reality; they laugh at those that do.
Is this a problem to my answer? It just seems like another explanation.
Frankly, it doesn’t matter if religious beliefs are truly held or not, the results are the same.
Trump supporters are fucking morons, I’d take 50/50 odds on there being a trump cult in the next 15 years that worship him as a second coming, and that would be valid as a religion.
Chemical based hand warmers. They look like tough-built teabags. Get them at any Home Depot or Lowes.
Also McDonalds cheeseburgers are nice. Where I’m at, they’re buy one, get one for $1. I can get 4 of them for $8. When I was homeless, I was calorically restricted and it sucked so much. One day there was a guy handing out McDonalds cheeseburgers from a big bag, and it was the best thing.
It’s a source of comfort. People want to be in control. If they can’t be in control, they at least want to feel like someone or something is in control. That there is some organizing force or principle to the universe. Religion, astrology, conspiracism etc all flow from that impulse.
While it’s true that the U.S. is the most convenient market for Mexican cartels, it’s worth knowing that it’s far from the only one. Mexican drug cartels have major connections to markets across the globe. and that Mexico specifically is the de facto administrator of drug trade in the western world. For example, a drug bust in India found fentanyl that had been purchased in Mexico from China. . That’s not the sort of arrangement that the US can ever hope to do away with through domestic legislation without undermining the autonomy of dozens of states around the globe.
While removing the cartels’ access to the American market via decriminalization would certainly take away a lot of funds, let’s not act like black market operations don’t exist in legal markets anyway.
In this hypothetical situation where the US is responsible for Mexico’s drug cartel problem (which I disagree with), I don’t think the road to success ends at the US legalizing drugs.
This is true, another example is Ecuador who is fighting an incredible surge in gang violence because the Mexican cartels are now operating in the south American country.
When there’s a clean supply of drugs green-lit by a superpower like the US, wouldn’t it naturally be exported to other countries? Sure, the cartel would still exist, but for the drug trade specifically, better availability of safe, quality drugs internationally would reduce international demand for cartel drugs, no? Wouldn’t other countries start manufacturing said drugs to import into the US as well, making it easier to fill the black market with regulated products?
It’s kind of a relic of the past now since everyone uses a streaming service of some kind now but right at the end of physical media’s lifespan, Japan had some key advantages over the US specifically because it was legal to rent albums and I believe individual songs, just like a Blockbuster. Eventually they had the music purchasing equivalent of Redbox in the form of kiosks as well with the advent of recordable Net-MD minidiscs, which only really ever saw success in Japan.
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