grylliade.org Free minds. Free markets. Free beer.

no mention of the Church of the Subgenius, Pastafari (Flying Spaghetti Monster), the Necronomicon, the LOL Cat Bible or any of the other religions or scriptures that don't have blood on them.

well, they're all roughly "new age" outgrowths since that's the one size fits all bin where nothing else that fits actually goes. but the subgenius and discordian routes in particular coming directly out of the intersection of the european occult tradition and american drug culture. the discordians came about as close to a unique modern american paganism as anything this country has ever seen.

the other things are religions in the same way that porn is modern dance.

Chopra is almost entirely harmless, at least. Doesn't seem to have people mortgaging their house to give him more money, or breaking all ties with family to go off to some ranch where they make jellies to sell on highways.

i was having a conversation with a friend on this very topic the other day. we're both friends with a guy who is going through a really annoying fuckhole atheist period, to the point where all of our allegories and anagrams and whatnot fall completely flat. (long story short, he got cheated on by a jewish girl because he's not jewish or whatever the reason was - this is almost a year ago now - and that sort of selection bias has been extrapolated into "religion is evil.") so i tried to explain it like this to him because i am giving this whole subtlety thing a run.

some people like rush. (hi guys) i don't know why. it confuses the hell out of me. some people like steve vai. why? i don't know. maybe they hate their ears. maybe they like watching guys jerk off, but can't face that part of their personality, so they sublimate it into guitar wanking voyeurism instead.

some people enjoy the fiction of dan brown or ayn rand. on a related note, some people like getting peed on but they're so ashamed about it growing up that they form a whole personality that's completely opposed to "guy who likes to get peed on" and then have periodic breakdowns with hookers because they never bothered trying to build an adult relationship in which one person can say to another "this may be weird, but i bought all that plastic sheeting at home depot not to cover furniture, but because i love you, i trust you, and i want you to pee on me." maybe it's the crushing alienation of modern consumerist capitalism, or the phases of the moon, or something else i haven't considered.

long story short, people make odd choices. what kills me, both in terms of laughter and tragedy, is how little this guy can see his own craziness for what it is, and deal with it as it is. as an example, for all the supposed rage-laden rationalists over on hit and run, the minute - nay, the fucking second - a thread about women, sex or especially the selections straight women make when it comes to the opposite sex so many of those "rationalists" become howling jackals of one stripe or another. and not just in terms of a kind of frat boy sexism that is somewhat unavoidable, if sad. their vaunted rationality means nothing when it comes to simple human interactions because, for whatever reason, they're fucked up inside like everyone else. and desire is a cloud of stupid, be it the desire for ass or status or whatever.

i put all these things into the same category - people are odd, because the world inside their head is a mish-mosh of all sorts of fucked up shit. it's important to recognize that first and foremost in one's interactions with the outside world that not everyone is you, and vice versa.

what i was really trying to say to him, obliquely - because good old fashioned direct action didn't work out - is that "everyone in the world is not you, and while it may be fun to rage against all, it's unseemly in people over the age of 15 or so. you are alone right now, even though you're surrounded by people. you will ultimately die alone, even if everyone is there. this is the fate of all things. but whatever people are, whatever you are, you are not just your hobbies, or your culture, or your faith or faith in your lack of faith, or your social standing, or your income or your job or whomever you're fucking at the moment. you are none of those things because whatever you are, it is not that. the same is true of everyone else around you. they are not their religion. they're not their taste in music, or books, or film or whatever other social markers you want to get hung up on. they're not their race or their culture either. whatever they are, it is not that. so get off your fucking high horse and stop being such an insufferable 12 year old cockhole just because you showed some girl all your pokemons and she hurt your feelings."

and thankfully reality will correct this issue at some point - more likely, it's just another social status marker. even the people who get hardcore into solipsism for a bit due to whatever factors rarely take that extra step of trying to stop a bus with their mind. and if they do, well...self-cleaning oven and all that.

i.e. even creationists take antibiotics.

but i don't know if i'd say any of that stuff is actually neutral; the instant sexism thing at hit and run comes to mind as being less than neutral - and probably having some deep social consequences - regardless of their supposed rationalism or lack thereof. it's not necessarily about "taste" though i can see how it may have come across that way. people take things hells of seriously and it forms the cornerstone of their identity - it's no small matter, even if the actual things under discussion are generally small matters. but they are largely things that don't actually matter as much as how someone acts towards others, which is probably the linchpin here i'm missing and a lot shorter than the primrose path i've been taking.

honestly, i wince when people use the term "rationalist" to describe themselves. maybe it's that shermer guy's fault? i don't know. but it's like when people use the term sheeple. i don't mean to wince, but i do. i know they're about as fucking rational as anyone else out there, by and large, and in some areas - particularly if they're male and single - they're about as rational as a kid hiding in the dark corner who's afraid of the boogeyman under his bed but really wants a glass of milk.

edit: hit and run delivers again

social markers are *really* important to humans.

Another angle is that part of me says, "Well, okay, this is just a group identity thingie." Well, fine, but if you are going to do that, why choose the one with the most absurd conditions? I mean why form your group centrally around the premise that you will broadcast factually incorrect arguments 24/7? Aren't you kind of saying "this reason thing, it's how the man keeps you down, you know? I get my jollies by dodging evidence, and so does my whole crew."

Is there some gang of aggressive solipsists running around the internet?

yeah that's different though. my inlaws are annoying marian-obsessed catholics and hick baptists from upstate new york but i'm sure if i had to talk about the secret or something i'd be kinda pissed too.

edit: needless to say i don't spend a lot of time talking about the more interesting facets of the bvm with my father-in-law, least of all because comparisons between our lady of guadalupe and 19 jade skirt would probably not go over well. a long time back i spent a month doing marian devotionals simply because i wanted to see what would happen if i threw myself into it 100%. there are worse things in this world than feeling like a kindly mother/babelicious figure is helping you get a seat on the bus and protecting your friends from harm and whatnot.

as for why people pick weird goofy stuff, i'd say it's because outside of social concerns it tends to have very little effect on their daily lives. creationists don't refuse antibiotics, etc. it's a way of ordering the mental landscape, and unless they're pushy and weird a la your inlaws, people tend not to know about the inner metaphysical lives of others.

yeah, that's just about the worst term for anything ever created. there are racial slurs that suck less.

i got a shermer mailing a few months ago that was pretty boring and shitty. it's the usual american "we're under attack send us money and buy our stuff!" type thing, but with a joe level of smugness. ugh-a-doodle-do. i was kinda surprised cause i'd seen him on tv once or twice and he seemed like a reasonable guy.

What you may be dealing with here, Number 6, is two different concepts. Sola gratia salvation as the grace of God alone, and Sola fide which is salvation by faith alone. Sola gratia began with the earliest days of the Protestant Reformation, and is inherent in the Lutheran/Calvinist concepts of predestination--God can grant salvation to an individual, and thus save them from damnation, without faith or works. Sola fide is, indeed, a newer concept.

Since I had to confirm the Latin, here's a source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_gratia

EDIT: Works rightousness plays no part in either one.

It's important to note that Martin Luther and the Funky Fresh Calvinists wouldn't have seen a distinction between sola fide and sola gratia. They saw it as a big circle; only god can save people (sola gratia) but God would only save those who have faith in him, because why would he want faithless in heaven? (sola fide) In that way, I don't think that GinSlinger's point is exactly germane; the two have only been distinction as a consequence of a modern development designed to explain how faith could keep from becoming an act in and of itself. With predestination that's not a problem (faith doesn't save you; it's just a gift given by God to the elect) so there's no reason to separate them.

As to the argument of you and your wife, your wife is much closer to being correct. All Protestants believe that God alone can save people, and does it regardless of their actions. The new development is the idea that faith can make a person worthy of being chosen by God, and therefore that free choice does exist. This fits with the Evangelical movement being an attempt to get away from predestination without jettisoning Protestantism completely.

So dhex, here's a gap I haven't been able to bridge when it comes to this sort of thing. For many of the new agey sorts I've encountered, and as you suggested earlier, these things are very important. They are important to the degree that they are fully invested in as social markers. Nearly all available free time is spent trying to bullet proof the theory, whatever it is, from, you know, evidence and stuff. I call the activity 'painting windows', it takes a great deal of effort and the end result is that no light gets in.

Given that level of importance, how do we reconcile the notion that the kookery in question is selected so that it doesn't have any real consequences? It is something my brain can't seem to handle - all of your time is spent on an activity, the activity dictates all of your social interactions, you verbally commit it to primary importance in your value hierarchy, but ... it isn't really important to you at the end of the day?

A fair number of Anglicans believe in "faith and works," but some Anglicans would only consider themselves Protestant insofar as they don't believe in the authority of the pope.

Hey now, the evangelicals only believe what the early church believed! It's not a recent creation! Just ask them!

Seriously, though . . . the whole fundamentalist/evangelical thing is a fairly recent phenomenon, but it has deep roots. So although the whole "born again" idea of salvation has only been emphasized recently, I'm not sure that Luther or Calvin would entirely disagree with it. They'd probably have problems with specific points of doctrine, though.

Posted 2x.

Removed.

I never realized that the Protestant churches had anything in common other than being Christian and not Catholic. Interesting stuff, here.
I've often asked people what distinguishes, say, a Methodist from a Presbyterian. (Including people who go to those churches) Most of the time, the answer is, "It's just a question of doctrine." But those people never seem sure about what doctrines make the difference.

Incidentally, my religious background looks something like this:
My parents were nothing in particular throughout most of my childhood, although my father was very into the Eastern Orthodox church for several years. I went to an Episcopal school from Kindergarten through 8th grade, and to a Jesuit HS and University. In college, I went through RCIA and became a papist, although that didn't really stick. I never noticed much difference between Episcopalians and Catholics, except that the Catholics seemed a bit more serious and scholarly about the whole religion thing.

These days, my views on religion can be summed up thusly: "I don't know whether God exists, and I certainly don't know what God wants if he/she/it does exist. And neither do you. But I'm pretty sure that treating other people like shit is not part of the divine plan, if it exists."

I think that makes me a Unitarian.

Like bloody hell I was. ELCA, bitches.

Wow, you got that from the ELCA? I only ever experienced "we're almost Catholic" from the more conservative flavors of Lutheranism.

jason:

i was thinking about this last night, and what i think i probably should have said is that their core beliefs regarding metaphysical (or even just what they think belongs in the category of "physics" which is no doubt amusing/infuriating in many cases) realities and whatnot don't have consequences because it's about their mental landscape and less how they interact with the world. someone's beliefs about the "true nature" of the universe or whatnot matters a lot less in the day to day than whether they pay their bills.

Not me; I'm completely consistent. Have I paid my bills this month or not? Maybe I have, maybe I haven't. I just don't think about it, because I really don't know until they send some guy named Schroedinger around to collect, and then the waveform collapses.

I grew up PCUSA, and learned in school that Calvinists believed in predestination, and that Presbyterians were the modern form of the Calvinist tradition. So I asked our minister if we were supposed to believe in predistination, and I got a very similar indraw of breath that Shem relates above. "In theory, I think we're supposed to, but not really" was his answer. At least our branch of PCUSA was very much salvation-through-faith, with a healthy pinch of salvation-inflation, big-carrot-little-stick Christianity.

If you asked my mother, her basic viewpoint was that Presbyterians and Episcopalians were put on the earth to keep the Methodists and Baptists from getting themselves into trouble. Or at least that was their social function in our little backwater of South Carolina.

If one was raised in a church rather than coming to it later in life, certainly how one was raised is far dominant over official church doctrine. I was raised heavy duty Lutheran, but I only remember snippets of official doctrine; what I *could* tell you is that I was raised by my parents to believe that salvation is through faith alone, with the twist that even though you can get to heaven without works, anyone who has true faith would do good works as well. So works aren't *technically* required, but they are indicative of your faith, which *is* required, so in a way no works=no faith=no heaven. But I have a feeling this twist in logic might have just been them defending against wise-ass arguing about being able get to heaven despite intentionally being a total badass your whole life on Earth.

Oh, and in our world of Lutheranism, Catholics were basically considered a cult.

Not to dicker but the chart's plain wrong about Adventists on at least one point.

Under "Afterlife", it reads, "A "peaceful pause" after death until the coming of Christ, then resurrection to judgment and eternity in heaven or hell".

As a point of doctrine, emphatic point I should say, Adventists don't believe in eternal hell.* They don't believe in the immortality of the soul. I think the correct term is "annihilationism".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annihilationism

Makes me suspicious about the rest of the chart, gotta tell ya.

*Kinda counter intuitive, huh? An apocalyptic religion that doesn't believe in hell.