I object to the use of “religion” as an idea cluster, while trying to redefine the cluster to only the things you like about it. I agree that many of these aspects are extremely common human drivers—community, ingroup bonding (which is hard to separate from outgroup hatred, BTW), etc. I don’t agree that they are purely good, and I don’t agree that the bundle of useful effects and false beliefs that is implied by the word “religion” is generally good.
Further, the second-person advice and use of “we” implies a universality which is simply untrue. There’s a WIDE variance in humans’ need for the good parts, and their ability to handle the bad parts, and the level they’re already involved in religion. Whether someone would improve their life with “more” or “less” religiosity is quite hard to determine individually, and just about impossible to generalize.
I don’t think I’m trying to redefine it in a way that only includes what I like about it. I’m pretty explicit about saying lots of religions do bad things. That doesn’t mean religion as a concept is bad; it just means particular religions are bad.
As to your second point, sure, but I think you’re just making the point we all already know about equal and opposite advice, and as with every article in this series I assume my readers are smart enough to notice if they need to apply the opposite advice because they’ve gone too far in the opposite direction. If you think this is an issue with this post, why make it on this post in the series rather than on a previous entry? I think this concern applies to literally every post I’ve made in the series.
The other posts in the series didn’t catch my attention enough to really consider their content—they’re on fairly unimportant topics that are (relatively) safe to experiment with and find one’s own equilibrium. Religion is often … invasive. The successful ones are memetically evolved to affect many aspects of one’s life and cognition. Even when they bring personal or social benefits, even if those are net positive with the bundled harms, they are not trivial to adjust one’s personal use of them.
I object to the use of “religion” as an idea cluster, while trying to redefine the cluster to only the things you like about it. I agree that many of these aspects are extremely common human drivers—community, ingroup bonding (which is hard to separate from outgroup hatred, BTW), etc. I don’t agree that they are purely good, and I don’t agree that the bundle of useful effects and false beliefs that is implied by the word “religion” is generally good.
Further, the second-person advice and use of “we” implies a universality which is simply untrue. There’s a WIDE variance in humans’ need for the good parts, and their ability to handle the bad parts, and the level they’re already involved in religion. Whether someone would improve their life with “more” or “less” religiosity is quite hard to determine individually, and just about impossible to generalize.
I don’t think I’m trying to redefine it in a way that only includes what I like about it. I’m pretty explicit about saying lots of religions do bad things. That doesn’t mean religion as a concept is bad; it just means particular religions are bad.
As to your second point, sure, but I think you’re just making the point we all already know about equal and opposite advice, and as with every article in this series I assume my readers are smart enough to notice if they need to apply the opposite advice because they’ve gone too far in the opposite direction. If you think this is an issue with this post, why make it on this post in the series rather than on a previous entry? I think this concern applies to literally every post I’ve made in the series.
The other posts in the series didn’t catch my attention enough to really consider their content—they’re on fairly unimportant topics that are (relatively) safe to experiment with and find one’s own equilibrium. Religion is often … invasive. The successful ones are memetically evolved to affect many aspects of one’s life and cognition. Even when they bring personal or social benefits, even if those are net positive with the bundled harms, they are not trivial to adjust one’s personal use of them.