Speaking from my own personal history with religion, the thing I objected to was not actually religion in general, but Protestant Christianity and specifically its attempt to control beliefs and thoughts.
Thank you. This makes sense and I had not thought of it.
I, too, find social pressure around what to believe abhorrent, while social pressure around how to act seems basically fine.
Do you (or anyone else who wants to answer this) think religion is basically un-alarming when it avoids social pressure around what to believe?
How do you feel about social pressures (in mainstream, non-religious society) to e.g. appear to like and to feel peaceful toward the people around you, appear to trust school to be about education and healthcare to be about health, etc.? Are these similar to or far from your experiences in Protestant Christianity?
A further comment about the religious history of people involved with Less Wrong, it also was heavily seeded by the 2000s decade internet atheist movement, which was itself largely a reaction to evangelical Christianity attempting to gain power politically in the US, and the reaction of young Christians of rationalist dispositions to realizing that we were confidently being ordered to believe stupid things, while at the same time also being told that noticing it was stupid was failing your religious duty.
I’d also emphasize what another comment said, that there has been a lot of interest in the community in creating secular rituals that replace the community rituals of religion without committing anyone to believing false facts (or really any facts at all).
It definitely is the case that there has been discussion of ways that parts of religion can be good for people, despite the underlying truth claims being false.
Thank you. This makes sense and I had not thought of it.
I, too, find social pressure around what to believe abhorrent, while social pressure around how to act seems basically fine.
Do you (or anyone else who wants to answer this) think religion is basically un-alarming when it avoids social pressure around what to believe?
How do you feel about social pressures (in mainstream, non-religious society) to e.g. appear to like and to feel peaceful toward the people around you, appear to trust school to be about education and healthcare to be about health, etc.? Are these similar to or far from your experiences in Protestant Christianity?
A further comment about the religious history of people involved with Less Wrong, it also was heavily seeded by the 2000s decade internet atheist movement, which was itself largely a reaction to evangelical Christianity attempting to gain power politically in the US, and the reaction of young Christians of rationalist dispositions to realizing that we were confidently being ordered to believe stupid things, while at the same time also being told that noticing it was stupid was failing your religious duty.
I’d also emphasize what another comment said, that there has been a lot of interest in the community in creating secular rituals that replace the community rituals of religion without committing anyone to believing false facts (or really any facts at all).
It definitely is the case that there has been discussion of ways that parts of religion can be good for people, despite the underlying truth claims being false.