Not to be a negative nelly but that’s like the whole internet. Our whole modern culture even.

Heck yes but. Seeing is better but hearing is more efficient. Like, it takes less energy, portable, transmittible.

So inevitably the hearing is gonna win. You’re gonna have this huge mass of people connected by hearing. And this relatively little bunch of people who sensibly stick with seeing, looking around going wtf.

But few actually use the scientific method. Most just treat science as another authority.

I think that authoritarianism is biological. For good and ill. And few ever overcome that.

Your attitude towards authority sounds identical to mine.

Also, I think the knowing-urge might be the bigger hazard. I mean, bigger than the authoritarianism urge.

I like the willingness to engage. But ya, that is no substitute for sane navigation of those emotions

Maybe faith is appropriate. Maybe it’s an expert talking. Maybe you couldn’t hope to understand the issue and you should just submit and obey for your own good.

I mean, it happens. I’m not saying that I generally go along with such programs, but I see the logic.

And also, there is a common urge to know. And to avoid ever not-knowing. To always have a solid story at hand to explain any phenomenon. So when we’re handed such a story, or an ensemble of such stories, like a toolkit for future use, we are inclined to swallow it. Because it serves us that way.

I don’t like that second program either, but again I see the logic. It’s just how people work.

I suspect that a culture is like a simple brainless organism. Like a worm. And it seeks to survive and grow.

I guess that’s a kind of meme. A contagious idea. And it gets into your thinking.

I agree. But sometimes it’s an expert. And the expert’s understanding is beyond you for some reason.

I’m not saying that this is necessarily the case but it happens.

To answer my own question.

It’s a tribalism enhancer. And a tool for domination. And a substitute for real growth.

But I’d rather blame the holder of the tool than the tool.

Use some of the other replies as your guide. They’ve done a pretty good job.

Actually, immutable made a very nice reply. Use his.

“some” may be applied to any of those. And any of those may apply to the nonreligious too.

So venture something more precise.

Lol. No thanks. I’ve put enough effort into this already.

No I didn’t do that. What I did is offer that I have, via meditation, experienced some stuff roughly corresponding to some religious stuff. And invited conversation.

Yeah, the response has been less than open minded.

Yes wrong. You haven’t even examined the witness.

And then you compound that wrong by misrepresenting his opening statement.

Wrong upon wrong.

Actually, in a court of law, we ask for the testimony of witnesses all the time. So you got that wrong.

Maybe you mean that it isn’t the kind of evidence that you want.

But there is evidence, my testimony.

Your thesis amounts to mere convention.

No, I do not see the harm. Lol.

Or “people are people”

Have you never been aggressed by the members of an atheist forum?

I’m just saying that people are guilty. All people. Not just the guys on the other team.

Guilty of crass behavior and guilty of sloppy thinking.