I admit there is provocation in my use of “religious belief”. This is on purpose.
I think a lot of rationalists dismiss the role that faith plays in every single worldview, and wrongly consider themselves to have an “objective view” of the world. If you rely on your five senses, have a human brain, prefer pleasure over pain, and do not speak every possible language extant or extinct or hypothetical, you are biased and have a limited subjective impression of the world.
I think if someone thinks they have an objective view of the world they are automatically disqualified from calling themselves rationalist :) There are certainly blind spots in every world view, including the rationalist one, and I see a lot of people here not realizing that. That said, going into the other extreme and calling a specific reasonably well defined concept something that it is not remotely similar to is bound to get a lot of pushback that you see.
You are using the term religious belief in a very non-central way. Don’t.
I admit there is provocation in my use of “religious belief”. This is on purpose.
I think a lot of rationalists dismiss the role that faith plays in every single worldview, and wrongly consider themselves to have an “objective view” of the world. If you rely on your five senses, have a human brain, prefer pleasure over pain, and do not speak every possible language extant or extinct or hypothetical, you are biased and have a limited subjective impression of the world.
I think if someone thinks they have an objective view of the world they are automatically disqualified from calling themselves rationalist :) There are certainly blind spots in every world view, including the rationalist one, and I see a lot of people here not realizing that. That said, going into the other extreme and calling a specific reasonably well defined concept something that it is not remotely similar to is bound to get a lot of pushback that you see.