A bit tongue-in-cheeck, but how about taking Tyler’s unfair label as a proposal?
We could start the rationality religion, without the metaphysics or ideology of ordinary religion. Our God could be everything we do not know. We worship love. Our savior is the truth. We embrace forgiveness as the game-theoretical optimal modified tit-for-tat solution to a repeated game. And so on.
We thoroughly investigate and aggregate the best knowledge humanity currently has on how to live. And we create Rationality Temples worldwide. There will be weekly congregations, with talks on a sequence, with following discussions, on topics such as signalling, bayesian thinking, cognitive biases. We propose a three step way to heaven on earth: identifying worthwhile causes, charting effective solutions and taking actions to achieve it. Lifetime goal is writing a sequence. Compassion meditation and visualisation prayer once per day. Haha, okay perhaps I’m overdoing it.
Using the well-established concepts, rituals and memes of religion is easy to mock, but what if it is also an effective way to build our community and reach our goals?
what if it is also an effective way to build our community and reach our goals?
It surely is an effective way, since by this mean all kinds of silly causes have been pursued. But creating a religion out of rationality (lowercase) would defeat its purpose: in the span of a year, rationality would become the password to learn by memory and the beginning structures will solidify as an attire. Religions are appealing exactly because they exempt their members from thinking on their own and accepting hard truths: rationality has instead more in common with martial arts, they are mostly a question of training and learning to take many hits.
Well, yes, but couldn’t one just make a new religion without those attributes. For example the first of the 10 commandments could be: Question everything, including these texts. Be a student, not a follower. Finding fault in ourself is the highest virtue, free speech etc. ? :-)
Tangential: I think the “four loves” thing is a bit of a cheat, like the “fifty Eskimo words for snow” meme. The Greeks had different words for describing different kinds of positive interpersonal affect—but so do we! We have “affection” and “friendship” and “devotion” and “lust” and “loyalty” and “benevolence” and so on.
That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with noticing when one of those words (in this case “love”) gets used very broadly, and it doesn’t change the fact that “see how other people classify things” is a useful heuristic. But I am entirely unconvinced that there’s anything very special about the Ancient Greeks, or the notion of love, in this regard—other than various historical contingencies involving C S Lewis, Christianity, and the history of the New Testament.
But I am entirely unconvinced that there’s anything very special about the Ancient Greeks
Well, they were pretty special, being the cradle of the Western civilization ’n’all, but in this specific case all I intended was to give the OP a possible list of specific meanings of the word “love” to consider.
Fair point, well I don’t think romantic love is worthy of sacred status in the irrationality religion. Tough those four neither seemed quite to fit the love I had in mind.
Perhaps something closer the buddhist concept of bodhisattva, meaning altruistic love for all sentient beings?
Ah, Christian love… the kind of altruistic love that makes people tell you that you’re a fallen and depraved creature due to the sin of Adam and thus will be burning in Hell forever unless you “accept Jesus as your savior” by becoming a Christian ASAP. (If precedent is any guide, I can already guess that Roko’s basilisk will be featured prominently in the new “rationality religion”!)
Well, our baseline is what, Buddhist love? There is Buddhist hell) as well and surprise! it doesn’t sound like a pleasant place. You get there through being enslaved by your lusts and desires—unless, of course, you accept the teachings of Buddha ASAP :-P
A bit tongue-in-cheeck, but how about taking Tyler’s unfair label as a proposal?
We could start the rationality religion, without the metaphysics or ideology of ordinary religion. Our God could be everything we do not know. We worship love. Our savior is the truth. We embrace forgiveness as the game-theoretical optimal modified tit-for-tat solution to a repeated game. And so on.
We thoroughly investigate and aggregate the best knowledge humanity currently has on how to live. And we create Rationality Temples worldwide. There will be weekly congregations, with talks on a sequence, with following discussions, on topics such as signalling, bayesian thinking, cognitive biases. We propose a three step way to heaven on earth: identifying worthwhile causes, charting effective solutions and taking actions to achieve it. Lifetime goal is writing a sequence. Compassion meditation and visualisation prayer once per day. Haha, okay perhaps I’m overdoing it.
Using the well-established concepts, rituals and memes of religion is easy to mock, but what if it is also an effective way to build our community and reach our goals?
It surely is an effective way, since by this mean all kinds of silly causes have been pursued. But creating a religion out of rationality (lowercase) would defeat its purpose: in the span of a year, rationality would become the password to learn by memory and the beginning structures will solidify as an attire.
Religions are appealing exactly because they exempt their members from thinking on their own and accepting hard truths: rationality has instead more in common with martial arts, they are mostly a question of training and learning to take many hits.
Well, yes, but couldn’t one just make a new religion without those attributes. For example the first of the 10 commandments could be: Question everything, including these texts. Be a student, not a follower. Finding fault in ourself is the highest virtue, free speech etc. ? :-)
Literally God of the Gaps! :-)
Which love?
Tangential: I think the “four loves” thing is a bit of a cheat, like the “fifty Eskimo words for snow” meme. The Greeks had different words for describing different kinds of positive interpersonal affect—but so do we! We have “affection” and “friendship” and “devotion” and “lust” and “loyalty” and “benevolence” and so on.
That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with noticing when one of those words (in this case “love”) gets used very broadly, and it doesn’t change the fact that “see how other people classify things” is a useful heuristic. But I am entirely unconvinced that there’s anything very special about the Ancient Greeks, or the notion of love, in this regard—other than various historical contingencies involving C S Lewis, Christianity, and the history of the New Testament.
Well, they were pretty special, being the cradle of the Western civilization ’n’all, but in this specific case all I intended was to give the OP a possible list of specific meanings of the word “love” to consider.
Fair point, well I don’t think romantic love is worthy of sacred status in the irrationality religion. Tough those four neither seemed quite to fit the love I had in mind.
Perhaps something closer the buddhist concept of bodhisattva, meaning altruistic love for all sentient beings?
Sounds like the plain old Christian love, but with a new cool label :-/
Ah, Christian love… the kind of altruistic love that makes people tell you that you’re a fallen and depraved creature due to the sin of Adam and thus will be burning in Hell forever unless you “accept Jesus as your savior” by becoming a Christian ASAP. (If precedent is any guide, I can already guess that Roko’s basilisk will be featured prominently in the new “rationality religion”!)
Well, our baseline is what, Buddhist love? There is Buddhist hell) as well and surprise! it doesn’t sound like a pleasant place. You get there through being enslaved by your lusts and desires—unless, of course, you accept the teachings of Buddha ASAP :-P