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I am religious and believe in free will

71 (27.7%)

I am religious and do not believe in free will

10 (3.9%)

I am not religious and believe in free will

114 (44.5%)

I am not religious and do not believe in free will

61 (23.8%)

Total Members Voted: 251

[BoujeeTheAlan]

Interesting study and I'm not hugely surprised because as stated above Iran was not super religious before the theocratic government. I'm a little surprised it swung so far in this direction though (more prevalent atheists than the USA is something). Only skimmed it but haven't picked up on any glaring methodology issues. When I have a chance I'll take a deeper dig

[dragdeler]

(more prevalent atheists than the USA is something)

I don't think it's the bar people make it out to be... Honestly I would have guessed britain is the most secular, and honestly I have a hard time seeing why germany is darker... But great job sweden and czech republic, also estonia and denmark kicking ass as usual.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It has been a decade, they should do it again.

Spoiler: classic (click to show/hide)

[BoujeeTheAlan]

Oh I'm under no illusions, fundamentalism is alive and well in swaths of the States and nothing on that map really surprises me. But it's fairly moderate compared with most of the global south (as well as Germany, Italy, Portugal and parts of the Balkans).

Virtually the entirety of Iran's neighborhood is solidly more religious than the states so to manage to be on the other side of our arbitrary US benchmark despite heavily theocratic governance is quite interesting.

Especially when you compare to neighbours like Turkey which I believe was also relatively more liberal (spiritually and otherwise) at one point but I think (perhaps I should check before I say this as I don't know the recent data) has become increasingly less so over the years

[dragdeler]

lol somewhat unrelated but since you mentionned the balkans and turkeys neighbourhood this reminds me of a discussion I had earlier today:

somehow I pressured him into taking position that estonia is west of belgium? I don't even know what the fuck is up with people I swear I mostly just look and listen IRL... anyway after I said: you're kidding right? you're saying turkey is north of belgium?! get the motherfucking atlas...


I could get him to agree but damn am I terrified how taking position in a conversation can lead people to say the dumbest shit.

[TD1]

A friend gifted me CS Lewis' 'Mere Christianity,' mostly as a conversation starter I think. Anyway, got through half of it today and we're having a merry discussion. He's Christian himself. I'm not (some of you will find that surprising. Possibly. Okay probably not ).

Anyway, morality is the topic of choice. Lewis seems to have believed that human morality is an external force, that morality is roughly similar everywhere. He uses good argument and analogies to support this point. For instance, he uses the example of a piano. There are many different keys but to get a tune you have to hit the right ones. We know when we are hearing the RIGHT tune. My friend agrees, I disagree. So I built my own analogy to sum my point up.

Morality is a game of cards.

Evolution is the deck.
Society is the hand.
The player is you/the individual.

The reason Lewis sees similarities between different moralities is because all societies draw from the same deck. Other decks are visible - I used the example of bees, whose moral imperative is the protection of the whole to the destruction of the individual - but not within humanity itself on any large scale.

Society determines which moral cards you can play in any given circumstance.

The individual, based upon its own past, memories, upbringing, and brain chemistry, chooses the cards they draw from that limited pool.

My friend's main sticking point is at the individual level, where he claims that the individual choice is where the external, ideal morality is found.

It's been a fun argument.

[Maximum Spin]

The problem is that you're both arguing different premises. You have different definitions of "morality" and will never reconcile your ideas of what morality is as long as you keep using the same word for two different things. Neither of you is more right than the other, you're just talking about different things.

I recommend choosing new, arbitrary words for your respective definitions in order to explore the underlying structure.

[TD1]

Okay. What do you perceive to be our different definitions for morality?

[Maximum Spin]

Okay. What do you perceive to be our different definitions for morality?

You literally wrote it in your post just now. He defines morality as an externally-defined fact about the world by which things are categorised according to a central judgement, while you define morality as the story which individuals tell each other in a society. These are completely different and will never be harmonised by rational argument.

For example, your friend almost certainly agrees that the story about morality which individuals tell each other in a society does exist, since cultures do disagree about what is moral; but he would likely say that these stories are not actually morality itself, and societies can be right or wrong (in the factual correctness sense) about the nature of the actual factual morality. By your definition, that's impossible; it's only possible to be right or wrong about what a particular society says is moral.

[TD1]

Yes. Absolute and relative morality. The underpinning concepts which flow through all theist-atheist discussions on morality.

But both are still morality. We do not question the 'what' - namely acting in a good fashion - only the how, why, and 'where from'.

[Maximum Spin]

But both are still morality. We do not question the 'what' - namely acting in a good fashion - only the how, why, and 'where from'.

Believing that is exactly the problem underpinning most philsophical conflict. The "what" is meaningless without agreement on the rest. You may agree that "the word 'morality' means 'acting in a good fashion'" but you disagree on what any of that actually means in terms of actions rather than words. Morality is what tells you what "a good fashion" IS. Without agreement on that, you do not agree on what morality means.

[TD1]

We have found our bedrock. "Morality is acting - even thinking, I suppose - in a good fashion."

And now we're arguing over the rest. Why is one action good? How do we know? What's its source?

You'd rather take the fun out of it if you defined us into different boxes.

[Egan_BW]

goodness is when the spacegod eats us

[Frumple]

we're already inside of spacegod, though

we've always been inside spacegod

being inside spacegod is a prerequisite of existence as we know it

so goodness is what is by dint of it is-ing

and that's how you go from divine omnipresent omnibenevolence to fundamental materialism, thanks medieval christian theologians

you knew not what you did

[Egan_BW]

Nah, we're not inside of Azathoth. You can tell because we're not screaming very much!

[Frumple]

Are you sure, though? Are we not screaming, or are we just so used to the screams we don't notice anymore?

Many people can hear that odd whining noise when they stop to listen to quietude. Perhaps it is just tinnitus, the broken biology of a haphazard evolutionary mess. Perhaps it's the music of the celestial spheres, the honeyed grinding of the myriad heavens.

Maybe it's the unending chorus of our collective screams. Infinite. Agonizing. The song of the dying of worlds. So pervasive our minds interpret it as silence.