My guess is that there is some active, endorsed, intelligent opposition to religion on LW, maybe because some people understand something I don’t. I want to figure out whether that’s so. I want this in case there’s a good reason to fear religion (so I can know this important true thing), and in case there isn’t (so I can bridge to LW-ers better, and can avoid being spooked by something silly).
I think “active, endorsed, intelligent opposition” is the wrong framing. LW is very lightly moderated, and it’s unlikely that anyone is organizing any downvote-brigades. (note: it does happen sometimes, but I don’t know your history so I can’t tell if all your posts and comments simultaneously got bombed, or if you just tried a few times and got small numbers of downvotes).
Instead, think of religion, like current politics, as “hard mode” for discussion on LW. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-is-the-mind-killer is the standard warning, and “people go funny in the head when discussing ” can end in religion just as easily as politics. In order to have a fruitful discussion about LW-relevant topics (rationality, empiricism, and even social organization), it requires a fair bit of preparation and specificity to make specific claims and points of discussion that can easily be evaluated without bringing in a large amount of vague and controversial connotations.
There is definitely reason to have some trepidation in bringing up religion among people who don’t share your underlying framework. True among family, at work, and on message boards like LW. I suspect that trying to “bridge to LW-ers” is a doomed idea. If you have aspects of rationality which include religion that you’d like to explore together, that’s probably achievable, but not guaranteed to succeed. And especially so if you mean “a religion” rather than “religion”.
edit: I went and looked at the posts linked in the grandparent comment. I hadn’t paid much attention to them when posted, but now I bothered to read them, and downvoted the one about god, leaving un-voted the one about LW’s reaction to it. I note the similarity to this post, and would like to point out “talking about religion’s role in human behavior” is fine, talking about “god” as if that were a real thing separate from the religion who defines the god is likely to get downvoted.
I think “active, endorsed, intelligent opposition” is the wrong framing. LW is very lightly moderated, and it’s unlikely that anyone is organizing any downvote-brigades. (note: it does happen sometimes, but I don’t know your history so I can’t tell if all your posts and comments simultaneously got bombed, or if you just tried a few times and got small numbers of downvotes).
Instead, think of religion, like current politics, as “hard mode” for discussion on LW. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-is-the-mind-killer is the standard warning, and “people go funny in the head when discussing ” can end in religion just as easily as politics. In order to have a fruitful discussion about LW-relevant topics (rationality, empiricism, and even social organization), it requires a fair bit of preparation and specificity to make specific claims and points of discussion that can easily be evaluated without bringing in a large amount of vague and controversial connotations.
There is definitely reason to have some trepidation in bringing up religion among people who don’t share your underlying framework. True among family, at work, and on message boards like LW. I suspect that trying to “bridge to LW-ers” is a doomed idea. If you have aspects of rationality which include religion that you’d like to explore together, that’s probably achievable, but not guaranteed to succeed. And especially so if you mean “a religion” rather than “religion”.
edit: I went and looked at the posts linked in the grandparent comment. I hadn’t paid much attention to them when posted, but now I bothered to read them, and downvoted the one about god, leaving un-voted the one about LW’s reaction to it. I note the similarity to this post, and would like to point out “talking about religion’s role in human behavior” is fine, talking about “god” as if that were a real thing separate from the religion who defines the god is likely to get downvoted.