12 ms·

The Truth Matters and Secular Humanists Should Defend It

130 points by mckern 4y ago

newaccount2021 4y ago
anon291 4y ago
While I would love to see this happen, I'm no longer convinced that anything other than fear of eternal torment can prompt people to actually defend the truth. It may be cynical but it's where I've been for a few years now. I don't think there's any evidence of humans ever having actually stood up for any idea in large numbers, other than in religious settings. So to use the articles own insistence against them... What time evidence do they have that their philosophy is motivating enough to make anyone actually do what they want?
- JohnTHaller 4y ago
  Considering the number of people who have beliefs and voting patterns that differ drastically from what their religion espouses as ethical and moral, the fear of eternal torment isn't the motivator you think it should be.
  - engineer_22 4y ago
    What you do in the voting booth, and what you do on your deathbed... those are different things. Not heard in hospice homes around Florida: "May god forgive me for voting for Bush"
  - anon291 4y ago
    I don't know of any political party in the United States that fully encapsulates the morals of any major world religion.
- engineer_22 4y ago
  The question older than Civilization itself: how to make the human behave the way you want it to? Any good manager will tell you the answer is as long as it is varied.
- chaps 4y ago
  May I ask what your beliefs are? Some of the strongest seekers-of-truth I know are atheist, or so agnostic they might as well be atheists. The biggest liars I know of are deeply religious.
  - poszlem 4y ago
    To offer a contrary perspective - some of the staunchest woke people I know are former (or "born again") atheists and the "new atheism" community was among the first to become captured by that movement.
    - User23 4y ago
      What’s interesting to me is how much of atheism, rationalism, and the various fellow travelers is dominated by people who are clearly well onto the autism spectrum. Atheism is basically the result of an inability to read spiritual cues just as typical autistic behavior stems from an inability to read social cues. I feel for people who are spiritually blind, but I’m really not interested in their opinions on religion anymore than I am in a tone deaf person’s opinions on music.
      - pstuart 4y ago
        I'm an atheist because I believe in one less god than you do. I'm spiritual as fuck, and while I may have my issues, autism is not one of them.
        User23 4y ago
        > I'm an atheist because I believe in one less god than you do. That’s not a reason, it’s just the definition of atheism. Why are you an atheist? > I'm spiritual as fuck, and while I may have my issues, autism is not one of them. I’m not sure we mean the same thing by spiritual. For example I believe, as St Augustine explains so marvelously in his Confessions, that God is a purely spiritual being. Do you believe that a spiritual reality exists independently of the material one and that human beings are both material and spiritual creatures? If not then you aren’t as spiritual as any vulgarity because you don’t actually believe yourself to be spiritual at all. I don’t want to impute beliefs to you that aren’t truly yours though, so unless you choose to clarify I’ll just consider that one possibility.
- JKCalhoun 4y ago
  > fear of eternal torment Do people really believe this though? I get your point in general though: religion works.
  - engineer_22 4y ago
    >Do people really believe this though? Yes. Might come as a surprise, but some people really believe the world is round. /s
  - epgui 4y ago
    Yes, people believe it. A scary large amount of people.
    - JKCalhoun 4y ago
      "Faith is believing something you know ain’t true."
- webmobdev 4y ago
  > I don't think there's any evidence of humans ever having actually stood up for any idea in large numbers, other than in religious settings. So to use the articles own insistence against them... What time evidence do they have that their philosophy is motivating enough to make anyone actually do what they want? That is an insightful comment and I agree with you - for the proof, just look at all our successful political leaders around the world. Rarely does a politician who advocates for atheism while disparaging all religion win. On the contrary, there are great politicians, like Moses, Muhammad and Gandhi, who really become leaders because of how they embrace religious as part and parcel of their very identity, in a very spiritual manner that earns them respect of many. The problem is not with religion or religious people, but with fundamentalism. To accept any new truth, you need to be able to let go of the earlier truths. And that's not really easy to do as we age. That is why it often takes a generational shift for new ideas, and new truths, to emerge.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    I think all you've proven is that to become a political figure that you must hold some beliefs of the governed. As the world becomes less religious this trend will disappear.
    - webmobdev 4y ago
      The world isn't becoming less religious. It maybe on decline in the west, but is flourishing everywhere else.
  - anon291 4y ago
    Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X were also both religious. MLK of course was a preacher. And Malcolm X was a Nation of Islam evangelist.
- mjmsmith 4y ago
  Fear of torment encourages people to go along with religious dogma. What does that have to do with defending the truth?
User23 4y ago
> The Genetic Lottery This is such a transparently silly concept. Human beings do not mate randomly or even remotely close to randomly. The genes that you inherit are a product of your parents’ choice of mate, not some lottery. Those choices are informed by both biological and cultural factors.
- ctoth 4y ago
  Man, I must have missed the spot on the form I could fill in to choose my parents pre-birth. But seriously though, something that happens randomly to you (you don't get to choose your parents) seems similar-enough to a lottery to be used as a metaphor.
  - eikenberry 4y ago
    You also missed the fact that there was no you pre-birth. You can't be lucky about who you are... as there is no one to be lucky about that. You are who you are.
- laputan_machine 4y ago
  You (the child) do not get to pick the outcome. Hence it is a lottery.
  - eikenberry 4y ago
    The child is the outcome, not the winner/loser. The child is more akin to the reward the lottery gives out than the person getting the lottery. Closest participant to that would be the parents who are getting a "lottery" child... as they (currently) have no deliberate control over the genetic expressions.
    - scatterhead 4y ago
      > The child is more akin to the reward the lottery gives out than the person getting the lottery. You seem to be missing the point that we are stuck with who we are. Our mental and physical faculties are handed down to us. We receive them, even though they define us. We experience ourselves.
hanafudafan 4y ago
Pious lies work much better, most people aren't interested in truth. The enlightment is completely dead, why try to resurrect these old, white, male driven ideas?
- DiggyJohnson 4y ago
  Does them being “old”, “white”, and “male” make these ideas inherently bad. You’re asking why we ought to value truth and why we ought to not judge by the color of one’s skin. Don’t those things have obvious value over their alternative. That’s why I prefer them.
  - boeingUH60 4y ago
    I think you missed the sarcasm..
    - zdragnar 4y ago
      I've heard people genuinely say such things, there's nothing about the statement to indicate sarcasm to me (not doubting that it is, only that it didn't translate well).
    - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
      If I did, I make no apologies lol. I thought it was just a strangely worded (over-qualified) comment.
    - engineer_22 4y ago
      Actually, if you look at their comment history, they might be serious....
poszlem 4y ago
We are living in the post-truth, post-modernist era, and I am very happy that more and more people are realising where it is taking us. I feel genuine relief reading again things like: <<<We cannot have differing rules based on the speaker’s skin color, gender, or political affiliation. No one has a higher claim to the truth because of their group identity. “Who you are does not count;” Rauch says, “the rules apply to everybody and persons are interchangeable.”>>> Something that over the last few years has been heavily contested and went from being one of the most obvious values to one that triggers the most vitriol.
- giantg2 4y ago
  "We are living in the post-truth" This implies there was a truth era. When was that?
  - scatterhead 4y ago
    It's just a dumb name to represent an idea. "an era of increased skepticism towards the idea of objective truth" is the idea.
  - poszlem 4y ago
    The "truth era" wasn't the era when everything was true, but when we actually believed that there is such a thing as "the truth". I would argue that up until the time when "Applied Postmodernism" took hold in some of our most important institution we could say that we lived in the "truth" era.
    - wwweston 4y ago
      Postmodernism is the reckoning with the problem, not the problem itself. It recognizes epistemological difficulties and how different power interests or ideological preferences are often tied up with claims of "the truth." The people who dislike it the most tend to be either those who've been effectively manipulated by power interests, or those who find reckoning with the difficulty of finding the truth inconvenient.
laputan_machine 4y ago
The more that we can voice these views calmy and rationally, the more that people will reflect upon it. It takes courage to do so.
- solardev 4y ago
  That only works on some people. Others respond better to loud angry messages. Or funny ones. Or reverent ones, or whatever. As a self-described secular humanist, I think part of the reason the philosophy has remained so cloistered is BECAUSE it only tries to be "calm and rational" -- which the overwhelming majority of humans don't respond to on an emotional level. Evolution didn't give us the tools to readily make value judgments from careful analysis. It's its own kind of echo chamber, heavily intellectual but not very charismatic or viral and limited to its own tiny bubble. Truth in a snowglobe.
  - engineer_22 4y ago
    All the nobility of a lion. The power of a skunk.
- Grim-444 4y ago
  Calmly and rationally? "It was relatively easy for most of us to condemn the allergic-to-truth rantings of former President Donald Trump. His lies were so transparent and prodigious that anyone outside the MAGA-verse could easily see through them. Many of us collectively recoiled at the reality-distortions he spun and how they were lapped up with religious-like zeal by his followers." This is "calmly and rationally" to you? To immediately start a persuasive article by launching into a political rant? Your "rationality" is demonstrated by emotional rantings of somehow who's obviously pretty much as hard to one end of the political spectrum as one can be? Who defines their political beliefs as "the truth", and anyone who believes anything different than them as a evil moronic heathen?
- 0ct4via 4y ago
  To which views are you referring, exactly? TFA switches from a specific political hit (arguably irrelevant to secularism), to teaching creationism in science classes in the US (actually relevant), to a politically-charged and ignorance-fuelled hit piece on so-called "social justice police" and transgender people. Humanist secularism is supposed to be about decrying and dismantling religious dogma, and keeping church and state separate -- and only one of the points above is relevant -- the others are simply personal views of the author, and not actually relevant to secularism or humanism at all.
giantg2 4y ago
Maybe I missed it, but I think the article skipped an important point. Science != policy
- engineer_22 4y ago
  Unless you code in MatLab, in which case: Science ~= policy
brink 4y ago
To get to the truth, you have to be open-minded. Many modern secularists claim to be open-minded, even the left leaning liberals claim to be open-minded, but they're more closed minded than their ancestors. Everyone wants the great claim of being open-minded without the cost of actually being open-minded. There's an element of sacrifice when it comes to getting to the truth. To actually be open-minded, you have to sacrifice your idealism, which is a lot harder than it seems. Especially since many of our prejudices are hidden to us, and we could spend a lifetime preoccupied with identifying what's true and what's prejudice.
- engineer_22 4y ago
  How did you get so much Karma?
- II2II 4y ago
  Idealism, or ideals? Perhaps it is just me, but I view idealism as a state of mind and ideals as what one values. It would be truly sad to sacrifice the former, yet the latter can evolve to reflect the truth.
  - brink 4y ago
    Yeah, you're probably right. I'm not very good with words.
- guelo 4y ago
  This is so condescending, as if the religious and right leaning conservatives are the only brave truth seekers. Many on the left have painful experiences of accepting truths that cause them to cast aside deeply held traditions and cultures, or that tear apart relationships with friends and family. Social conservatives are all about rejecting any truth that might disrupt old traditions or social hierarchies.
  - engineer_22 4y ago
    I was with you, but then you committed the same sin as OP. > Social conservatives are all about rejecting any truth that might disrupt old traditions or social hierarchies.
danjc 4y ago
Determinedly divining the real truth while helpfully pointing out the errors of others.
- SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
  > [Trump always lied and everyone but the MAGA zealots could see it!!!] Yea... I almost tuned out right then. It would have been a FAR stronger article if it took some actual stance on truth, like "If truth actually matters, here are all the times Trump was right and the media lied or kneejerked the other way, so did we go along with it?". I don't like Trump, but that article would have convinced me the author actually cared about objective truth. Instead, it was "You need to follow the truth I agree with!" which is just more post-modernism in the name of something else.
  - epgui 4y ago
    Who cares if Trump was right about one or two things? Everything that came out of his mouth was bullshit (in the academic sense of the word [1]). But he said a lot of things, so obviously he’s going to come close to the truth once in a while. These accidents are no cause for celebration. When you care about truth, bullshit is the opposite of what you celebrate, regardless of whether it’s accidentally true or not. [1] The difference between bullshit and lies is that the person who lies tries to cover up of fabricate truth, but the bullshitter doesn’t care about the truth-value of the statements that are made.
    - SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
      I suggested a different path for the exactly the reason you are coming off as as an ideologue now. No one had to bring up Trump, but the author chose to. It makes his argument weaker by saying "WE NEED THE TRUTH!!" but then just talks like someone who spent years with their screen saying "IT'S ALL LIES, HE IS HITLER". As much as I don't like him, it's plain as day that it wasn't "all lies" or "academic bullshit". I work in an industry that was drastically albeit temporarily changed for the better by a couple policy decisions the last admin made, they were shit on endless by the media that was dead-wrong. Seeing it first hand was a noticeable moment for me. Both you and the author can't even take a moment to see past yourself, but that's what the point of the article is about. How bizarre.
Barrin92 4y ago
Secular humanism is and has been on the way out and as a philosophy it's sort of impoverished. The big issue is in the title, namely the simplistic relationship to truth. There's a dinstinction between fact, which is the business of science, and truth which is always contextual. Take the claim from the article: "Truths about the universe don’t depend on which country you are in" Facts about the universe don't care where you're at. Truth which imposes meaning and perspective on facts very much does. By neglecting culture, myth and narrative which are central to how humans make sense of the world this secular perspective becomes completely unappealing, and that's not the fault of the non-enlightened masses but because that worldview is superficial. It also has the tendency to end up with a scientific fatalism that conflates what is and what ought to be. This is usually where secular humanism suddenly turns a little bit dark, and not-so-very-humanist. Also on display in the article when "behavioral genetics" is elevated from something that ought to provide us with tools to increase human agency to something that apparently "determines life outcomes" ("genetic lottery"). That's the point where it's obvious that really the belief system is something closer to scientism, that is to say using science to impose values on people. A belief system that ignored human cultural and religious experience and reduces individuals to a collection of genes is many things, but certainly not humanistic.
- engineer_22 4y ago
  Secular humanism tastes like cardboard.
felix318 4y ago
“ Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed. “ G.K. Chesterton, Heretics
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
The blog he referenced was discussed here recently. I can't find the specific discussion, but searching on the domain is probably a good summary: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=whyevolutionistrue.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=whyevolutionistrue.co... The conclusion in that thread, as I recall, and apparently coming from people in NZ, seemed to be that he was mostly misrepresnting it to generate rage bait, similar to Critical Race Theory discussions.
- Negitivefrags 4y ago
  I know several science teachers in NZ and there is a very real problem. They are very angry. In the last week my friend who is a physics teacher told me that the most recent offence of the ministry of education is that they will be removing the “data gathering” and “data analysis” parts of the science curriculum. This hasn’t hit the news yet because it’s very fresh and they haven’t actually published the new curriculum yet. It’s also getting a lot of push back from teachers, and so it’s possible that it gets walked back, but the fact that people in control there even think that such a thing is on the table tells you something about the current views of people in charge at the ministry. Many experienced and excellent teachers are resigning because they have had enough.
nati0n 4y ago
Nobody argues that the truth doesn't truly matter.
- jawns 4y ago
  I have arguments about exactly that with friends who are otherwise very smart, and though they don't come out and say directly that the truth doesn't matter, they say equivalent things, like, "Well that's your truth, but who's to say it's my truth? We can't know for certain what the truth is, so why should we be able to force our version of the truth on someone else?"
  - pixl97 4y ago
    I think that is confusing many different things and specifying them as 'truth'. This gets complicated in social situations where opinions firm feedback loops and due to complexity of the causality tree people don't understand if what they are talking about is an opinion or a truth. This gets more complex when you start talking about local maxima versus global maxima, and even comparing local maxima from different locations. Truth is not simplicity and this leads to a lot of social problems between different groups.
  - whendoyoushrink 4y ago
    I wish we'd move away from "truth" and uses "facts" and "conclusions" instead. Most really bad ideas take incorrect facts, and use them to draw tenuous conclusions. The examples in the blog are precisely that, the puberty blockers and the Maori traditional knowledge. The elegance of stating "truths" is that the definition of "truth" has always been wishy-washy, to the point it is the vast majority of most philosophy 101 classes. You can have whatever "truth" you like, but you can't choose your facts, and if your conclusions are predicated on bad or simply false facts, your conclusion can be ignored.
  - bryananderson 4y ago
    Some truths are objective, others are subjective. “The atomic number of helium is 2” is an objective truth. “The best flavor of ice cream is chocolate” is a subjective truth. It might be my truth, but not yours. Maybe your truth is that strawberry is best. For a more relevant example (not saying you are disagreeing, just that it’s a topic of the article), the fact that someone experiences gender dysphoria may be, in this sense, their truth. It is a question of the individual’s subjective experience. Everyone acknowledges that people have different subjective experiences, but for some reason, when it comes to this specific issue, acknowledging subjective experience is treated as tantamount to declaring that everybody gets to pick their own atomic number for helium.
fibvg 4y ago
- 0ct4via 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - splistud 4y ago
  - fruit2020 4y ago
  - engineer_22 4y ago
    >Even for adults, it doesn't happen without a great deal of psychological analysis, lived experience, multiple concurring psychological reviews, and informed consent. To play the devil's advocate: A minor child cannot provide consent, and that's kind of the problem. --------------- Edit: To give the idea a little more flesh: It's the duty of the of the State to represent the well-being of a child, if the children's parents are unable or unwilling to do so. Let's be hypothetical here and imagine a place where a majority of the People of a State believe "gender affirming care" is not in a child's best interest, then you could have a situation where the State is compelled to do what was done in Texas. Are the majority of people in Texas of the belief that "gender affirming care" is not in a child's best interest? I don't know, but it seems plausible. Is "gender affirming care", in truth, the best thing for a child? I don't know. I don't know how to even start to approach that question in an acceptable way.
    - 0ct4via 4y ago
      What do you achieve by making that argument? I was literally referring to adults and bottom surgery, because *bottom surgery isn't being performed on children*. The problem is that you missed the point entirely.
      - 4y ago
apienx 4y ago
Isamov has this great "Relativity of wrong" piece that counters post-modernism. It's often the case that one of us is closer to the truth, even if both of us are wrong. https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dbalmer/eportfolio/Nature%2520of%2520Science_Asimov.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiUjqq6o977AhXI_aQKHWCtDz8QFnoECBkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2cdD4Zh4pBQOxMvjShNr8P https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dbalmer/eportfolio/Nature%2520of%...
- tehnub 4y ago
  Isaac Asimov -> Isamov :)
- omginternets 4y ago
  I'm getting a 404.
  - 0ct4via 4y ago
    It's up for me, but there's a Wayback Machine copy at http://web.archive.org/web/20221121134310/https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dbalmer/eportfolio/Nature%20of%20Science_Asimov.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20221121134310/https://www.sas.up...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ttpphd 4y ago
This blogpost is not fairly representing the current state of the conversation about care for transgender kids. That is dishonest behavior and as a secular humanist I feel obligated to call in and present a fuller picture. https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/3/e2022056567/188709/Sex-Assigned-at-Birth-Ratio-Among-Transgender-and https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/3/e20220... "Our findings from a national sample of adolescents across 16 states reveal that the sex assigned at birth ratio of transgender adolescents does not favor transgender adolescents assigned female sex at birth." The claims of social contagion and so on have been examined and they just aren't true. It is also wrong to represent that level of uncertainty about puberty blockers, which have been and continue to be used by cis children for years without a peep or a poop from those currently in a panic about trans kids on puberty blockers. It is also paternalistic and authoritarian to say that weighing risks and benefits of puberty blockers should be done by culture warrior politicians rather than a conversation between a patient and a doctor. The data are in, the debate is settled: it's simply a moral panic and it harms real people to pretend there are enough open questions to merit further discussion. You're just being a bigot who refuses to acknowledge empirical reality at that point, not a secular humanist. 1 out of 4 stars.
- savingsPossible 4y ago
  > In Europe, some medical groups have discouraged or limited the use of puberty blockers.[17] Following the Bell v Tavistock decision by the High Court of Justice for England and Wales, in which the High Court ruled children under 16 were not competent to give informed consent to puberty blockers — overturned by the Court of Appeal in September 2021 — Sweden's Karolinska Institute, administrator of the second-largest hospital system in the country, announced in March 2021 that it would discontinue providing puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to children under 16. Additionally, the Karolinska Institute changed its policy to cease providing puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to teenagers 16–18, outside of approved clinical trials.[82] On 22 February 2022, Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare said that puberty blockers should only be used in "exceptional cases" and said that their use is backed by "uncertain science".[19] However, other providers in Sweden continue to provide puberty blockers and in Sweden, a clinician's professional judgment determines what treatments are recommended or not recommended. Youth are able to access gender-affirming care when doctors deem it medically necessary. The treatment is not banned in Sweden, unlike in Alabama and Arkansas, and is offered as part of its national healthcare service.[19][83][84] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puberty_blocker#Legal_and_political_challenges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puberty_blocker#Legal_and_poli... Puberty blockers are not a settled matter in the medical community. > It is also wrong to represent that level of uncertainty about puberty blockers, which have been and continue to be used by cis children for years without a peep or a poop from those currently in a panic about trans kids on puberty blockers. the effects of blocking early puberty might be very different that those of blocking "in time" puberty I wonder if it was me... If I was trans, would I be desperate, and pissed about people trying to dispassionately discuss issues that would greatly affect my life. Maybe... But it seems like a general rule: to get to a good decision, we always need dispassionate discussion. Usually for much a greater time than the passionate people would give us.
boeingUH60 4y ago
A short story: I once was recruited by an acquaintance to work on the social media campaign of a local politician contesting for the governorship election. Mind you, this isn't the US or any western country but a third-world nation. I was a college student on break, so it was an easy way to make some money...nothing wrong I thought. Well, time to start work, and it turns out it isn't as straightforward as I thought. This social media campaign involved creating fake Twitter accounts with AI-generated photos as profile pictures and pushing stories supporting the politician. I've always hated social media and wasn't too familiar, so I thought, does this even work? Well, yeah, it worked. We pushed frankly bogus stories and overtly biased posts and many of them got to the Twitter front page for users in my country. Even I was shocked how those posts had a considerable impact, and the politician ended up winning the election. This work thought me a great lesson; quit social media because you're being manipulated everywhere. Mind you, this was a small operation with less than two dozen persons. Imagine what someone with a massive budget, let's say Putin or MBS, could achieve by building a propaganda farm employing thousands...It's definitely hard to discern truth when everyone is being fed a large stream of propaganda at every second. As for me, I quit social media or any type of news...I'm not confident in my abilities to discern truth when there are dedicated teams of psy-op operators trying to manipulate me. If you think you're smart enough to counter such efforts, good luck to you, but as for me, I think the human brain did not evolve to handle mass media positively.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Dead internet theory becomes more true every day. It's morphed into the mountains of madness where if described 100 years ago we would consider it an eldritch horror.
  - Avicebron 4y ago
    an addictive panopticon
- islanderfun 4y ago
  Very interesting story. Quitting social media is something I've thought countless times. But after reading this I can't help but think what if this comment is a psy-op operation. Very meta and inside my own head. Which can be a goal in of itself.
1attice 4y ago
<deleted>
- pstuart 4y ago
  Your journey is is literally the epitome of self-governance, and yet the party that ostensibly advocates for more self-governance seems to fear you and others on that journey as the top threat to society today. The only way that makes sense is when viewed with a cynical eye: people are spooked by "not normal", and spooked people are more easily manipulated. It's disgusting on so many levels.
  - poszlem 4y ago
    You can both say that people should be able to self-govern themselves and at the same time have a cut-off age before which they should not. The trans debate would be much less heated if it did not involve other people's children.
    - pstuart 4y ago
      I have to imagine it's got to be painful and challenging as a parent to go through that. Obviously this is not to be done lightly but it seems like it's ultimately the business of the child, their doctor, and their parents. > The trans debate would be much less heated if it did not involve other people's children. Oh really? What about bathrooms? I hear that trans people love to go to bathrooms and molest children.
      - poszlem 4y ago
        I can assure you that any discussion that involves other people's children is on another level of heat when compared to even the most heated debate about bathrooms.
      - bbbbbp 4y ago
        Are you referring to incidents like this: https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/4002789/morrisons-sex-attack-girl-fife-transgender-katie-dolatowski https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/4002789/morrisons-sex-...? If so, these are rare, and aren't the main reason why most people want to keep certain spaces as sex-segregated.
Brendinooo 4y ago
> We needed more than ancient books and the near universal buy-in by everyone else to convince us that supernaturalism is real. We needed empirical evidence. I wish people were more honest about the inherent contradiction in that assertion. Isn’t the point of “supernatural” that it will exist outside of empiricism (depending on how you define that)?
- gwd 4y ago
  > Isn’t the point of “supernatural” that it will exist outside of empiricism (depending on how you define that)? Um, no? "Supernatural" just implies that there's something outside the "natural". To the NPCs in World of Warcraft, you are supernatural, since you exist outside the rules of their system. There are certainly some Christians who say that faith requires the absence of evidence; "Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believed." But if you actually read the New Testament, that's not what the early Christians taught; on the contrary, they were all about evidence. None of the original disciples had the blessedness of believing without seeing, so it clearly cannot be a requirement for a genuine faith.
  - doliveira 4y ago
    What? "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see."
    - gwd 4y ago
      And yet earlier in the very same work, that author says: "This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will." (Hebrews 2:3b-4) Here he presents three types of evidence which are meant to corroborate Jesus' words: 1. The eyewitness testimony of the original disciples 2. Testimony from God, in the form of signs, wonders, and various miracles 3. Evidence of the Holy Spirit in the early Christians. I don't personally see that the world is round; or that microbes and viruses exist and make me sick; or any number of other things which modern science tells us. Yet I have assurance that they are true. That's the kind of faith the authors of the New Testament are recommending (including the author which you quote).
chasID7 4y ago
Truth is overwhelmingly inconvenient. Unlikely to draw advertising or funding from "stakeholders". Lip service on the other hand, is cheap and ubiqutious. Perfect for the limited lifespan of the average stakeholder. Education does not check self-interest, nor does wealth. "History" is cherrypicked and spun to useless effect. "Chip Wars" a case in point. That leaves a single useful guide: Biology of life on this moonmeld. That record is full of interesting studies and lessons. Also highly inconvenient. Portents poor for all sects of Humanists :(
jondeval 4y ago
Secular humanism in its more radical and moderate forms since the French revolution has always been subject to the direct and straightforward criticism that as a philosophy it will eventually lead to an erosion of a shared reference frame and eventually an erosion of sanity itself. What if this societal rejection of Truth that we are witnessing (and is summarized well by the article) is the direct result of the success of secular humanism? I think this is the elephant in the room.
- jay_kyburz 4y ago
  People don't know what to believe because of a lack of trust and faith in our authority figures. People don't believe what the government is telling them. Our governments are too big and not transparent enough. News media sacrificed their authority and trust when they decided to choose a side rather than say neutral. Reporting "the truth" is a for profit business where making slight adjustments to your perception of the truth results in more profit. If you don't trust the church, the government, or the news, where are you supposed to get your truth?
through_heart 4y ago
No. The truth doesn't matter. The fact does. The ruth is the majority people's view of a certain fact, and it is still subjective. What really matters is to allow people speak out their truth.
BaronVonSteuben 4y ago
I've made this argument to many progressive friends, and nearly all of them replied with a variant of "you're 'bothsides'ing this" which apparently is supposed to mean your argument is invalid. That then leads to me pointing out that world isn't a clear binary and "both (major) sides" can be wrong or have problems. For some reason though, that seems to be the end of the conversation and no progress toward reaching agreement is made.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ReactiveJelly 4y ago
The Internet has the same incentive landscape as bathroom stall graffiti. That's why you're so mad, Robyn. This isn't a back-and-forth between two real people who mutually respect each other. If I was talking to Robyn in real life, over coffee, for 2 or 3 hours, we'd probably get something productive done. But online, it's a hit-and-run dumpster where the truth matters a little, and humor and presentation matter _much more._ Robyn writes their wounded-gazelle piece whining about the woke cancel mob, and I try to 'clap back' without 'seething'. Wittgenstein would roll in his grave to see the level of MLG language gamers we have online these days. Nuance gets buried online. I am not gonna sit here and write a boring screen-long essay expressing my nuanced thoughts on the rights of trans adults and trans children, to an audience that might literally be reading this on the shitter. It works fine for less-controversial topics like Rust vs C. It just doesn't work for gender. They who write on shit-house walls... P.S. - If you have 2 hours to spare for nuance, I highly recommend the Contrapoints video about J. K. Rowling. This is a good, calm, nuanced discussion about why LGBTQ people and our allies don't like Rowling as much as we used to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gDKbT_l2us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gDKbT_l2us If you don't have 2 hours to spare, then you aren't gonna get nuance, sorry to tell you.
- 0ct4via 4y ago
  I'd be curious as to what your views are, since you so eloquently wrote your previous lines, but then basically refused to share your own views. I wouldn't necessary recomment ContraPoints as a "calm, nuanced discussion" when it comes to these issues when Natalie Wynn (who portrays various characters as Contrapoints) takes issue with gender-neutral language (invalidating non-binary people), entertains and employs transphobic views, and fails to even understand gender properly[1]. [1] https://alyesque.medium.com/how-contrapoints-misunderstands-gender-bd833cc6d8c8 https://alyesque.medium.com/how-contrapoints-misunderstands-... The nuance involved takes a lot more than a ContraPoints video to go through, and would be better served with both a different source and topic than the video you linked.
imbnwa 4y ago
Somewhere in Hell, Nietzsche is laughing his ass off at the contemporary socio-political landscape. Everything he had to say about 'Nihilism' (which is quite the opposite of 'lack of belief in anything') and 'The Last Man' (who, to paraphrase, "has figured out happiness... and blinks") came true.

130 points by mckern 4y ago

newaccount2021 4y ago

While I would love to see this happen, I'm no longer convinced that anything other than fear of eternal torment can prompt people to actually defend the truth. It may be cynical but it's where I've been for a few years now. I don't think there's any evidence of humans ever having actually stood up for any idea in large numbers, other than in religious settings. So to use the articles own insistence against them... What time evidence do they have that their philosophy is motivating enough to make anyone actually do what they want?

JohnTHaller 4y ago
Considering the number of people who have beliefs and voting patterns that differ drastically from what their religion espouses as ethical and moral, the fear of eternal torment isn't the motivator you think it should be.
- engineer_22 4y ago
  What you do in the voting booth, and what you do on your deathbed... those are different things. Not heard in hospice homes around Florida: "May god forgive me for voting for Bush"
- anon291 4y ago
  I don't know of any political party in the United States that fully encapsulates the morals of any major world religion.
engineer_22 4y ago
The question older than Civilization itself: how to make the human behave the way you want it to? Any good manager will tell you the answer is as long as it is varied.
chaps 4y ago
May I ask what your beliefs are? Some of the strongest seekers-of-truth I know are atheist, or so agnostic they might as well be atheists. The biggest liars I know of are deeply religious.
- poszlem 4y ago
  To offer a contrary perspective - some of the staunchest woke people I know are former (or "born again") atheists and the "new atheism" community was among the first to become captured by that movement.
  - User23 4y ago
    What’s interesting to me is how much of atheism, rationalism, and the various fellow travelers is dominated by people who are clearly well onto the autism spectrum. Atheism is basically the result of an inability to read spiritual cues just as typical autistic behavior stems from an inability to read social cues. I feel for people who are spiritually blind, but I’m really not interested in their opinions on religion anymore than I am in a tone deaf person’s opinions on music.
    - pstuart 4y ago
      I'm an atheist because I believe in one less god than you do. I'm spiritual as fuck, and while I may have my issues, autism is not one of them.
      - User23 4y ago
        > I'm an atheist because I believe in one less god than you do. That’s not a reason, it’s just the definition of atheism. Why are you an atheist? > I'm spiritual as fuck, and while I may have my issues, autism is not one of them. I’m not sure we mean the same thing by spiritual. For example I believe, as St Augustine explains so marvelously in his Confessions, that God is a purely spiritual being. Do you believe that a spiritual reality exists independently of the material one and that human beings are both material and spiritual creatures? If not then you aren’t as spiritual as any vulgarity because you don’t actually believe yourself to be spiritual at all. I don’t want to impute beliefs to you that aren’t truly yours though, so unless you choose to clarify I’ll just consider that one possibility.
JKCalhoun 4y ago
> fear of eternal torment Do people really believe this though? I get your point in general though: religion works.
- engineer_22 4y ago
  >Do people really believe this though? Yes. Might come as a surprise, but some people really believe the world is round. /s
- epgui 4y ago
  Yes, people believe it. A scary large amount of people.
  - JKCalhoun 4y ago
    "Faith is believing something you know ain’t true."
webmobdev 4y ago
> I don't think there's any evidence of humans ever having actually stood up for any idea in large numbers, other than in religious settings. So to use the articles own insistence against them... What time evidence do they have that their philosophy is motivating enough to make anyone actually do what they want? That is an insightful comment and I agree with you - for the proof, just look at all our successful political leaders around the world. Rarely does a politician who advocates for atheism while disparaging all religion win. On the contrary, there are great politicians, like Moses, Muhammad and Gandhi, who really become leaders because of how they embrace religious as part and parcel of their very identity, in a very spiritual manner that earns them respect of many. The problem is not with religion or religious people, but with fundamentalism. To accept any new truth, you need to be able to let go of the earlier truths. And that's not really easy to do as we age. That is why it often takes a generational shift for new ideas, and new truths, to emerge.
- pixl97 4y ago
  I think all you've proven is that to become a political figure that you must hold some beliefs of the governed. As the world becomes less religious this trend will disappear.
  - webmobdev 4y ago
    The world isn't becoming less religious. It maybe on decline in the west, but is flourishing everywhere else.
- anon291 4y ago
  Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X were also both religious. MLK of course was a preacher. And Malcolm X was a Nation of Islam evangelist.
mjmsmith 4y ago
Fear of torment encourages people to go along with religious dogma. What does that have to do with defending the truth?

User23 4y ago

> The Genetic Lottery This is such a transparently silly concept. Human beings do not mate randomly or even remotely close to randomly. The genes that you inherit are a product of your parents’ choice of mate, not some lottery. Those choices are informed by both biological and cultural factors.

ctoth 4y ago
Man, I must have missed the spot on the form I could fill in to choose my parents pre-birth. But seriously though, something that happens randomly to you (you don't get to choose your parents) seems similar-enough to a lottery to be used as a metaphor.
- eikenberry 4y ago
  You also missed the fact that there was no you pre-birth. You can't be lucky about who you are... as there is no one to be lucky about that. You are who you are.
laputan_machine 4y ago
You (the child) do not get to pick the outcome. Hence it is a lottery.
- eikenberry 4y ago
  The child is the outcome, not the winner/loser. The child is more akin to the reward the lottery gives out than the person getting the lottery. Closest participant to that would be the parents who are getting a "lottery" child... as they (currently) have no deliberate control over the genetic expressions.
  - scatterhead 4y ago
    > The child is more akin to the reward the lottery gives out than the person getting the lottery. You seem to be missing the point that we are stuck with who we are. Our mental and physical faculties are handed down to us. We receive them, even though they define us. We experience ourselves.

hanafudafan 4y ago

Pious lies work much better, most people aren't interested in truth. The enlightment is completely dead, why try to resurrect these old, white, male driven ideas?

DiggyJohnson 4y ago
Does them being “old”, “white”, and “male” make these ideas inherently bad. You’re asking why we ought to value truth and why we ought to not judge by the color of one’s skin. Don’t those things have obvious value over their alternative. That’s why I prefer them.
- boeingUH60 4y ago
  I think you missed the sarcasm..
  - zdragnar 4y ago
    I've heard people genuinely say such things, there's nothing about the statement to indicate sarcasm to me (not doubting that it is, only that it didn't translate well).
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    If I did, I make no apologies lol. I thought it was just a strangely worded (over-qualified) comment.
  - engineer_22 4y ago
    Actually, if you look at their comment history, they might be serious....

poszlem 4y ago

We are living in the post-truth, post-modernist era, and I am very happy that more and more people are realising where it is taking us. I feel genuine relief reading again things like: <<<We cannot have differing rules based on the speaker’s skin color, gender, or political affiliation. No one has a higher claim to the truth because of their group identity. “Who you are does not count;” Rauch says, “the rules apply to everybody and persons are interchangeable.”>>> Something that over the last few years has been heavily contested and went from being one of the most obvious values to one that triggers the most vitriol.

giantg2 4y ago
"We are living in the post-truth" This implies there was a truth era. When was that?
- scatterhead 4y ago
  It's just a dumb name to represent an idea. "an era of increased skepticism towards the idea of objective truth" is the idea.
- poszlem 4y ago
  The "truth era" wasn't the era when everything was true, but when we actually believed that there is such a thing as "the truth". I would argue that up until the time when "Applied Postmodernism" took hold in some of our most important institution we could say that we lived in the "truth" era.
  - wwweston 4y ago
    Postmodernism is the reckoning with the problem, not the problem itself. It recognizes epistemological difficulties and how different power interests or ideological preferences are often tied up with claims of "the truth." The people who dislike it the most tend to be either those who've been effectively manipulated by power interests, or those who find reckoning with the difficulty of finding the truth inconvenient.

laputan_machine 4y ago

The more that we can voice these views calmy and rationally, the more that people will reflect upon it. It takes courage to do so.

solardev 4y ago
That only works on some people. Others respond better to loud angry messages. Or funny ones. Or reverent ones, or whatever. As a self-described secular humanist, I think part of the reason the philosophy has remained so cloistered is BECAUSE it only tries to be "calm and rational" -- which the overwhelming majority of humans don't respond to on an emotional level. Evolution didn't give us the tools to readily make value judgments from careful analysis. It's its own kind of echo chamber, heavily intellectual but not very charismatic or viral and limited to its own tiny bubble. Truth in a snowglobe.
- engineer_22 4y ago
  All the nobility of a lion. The power of a skunk.
Grim-444 4y ago
Calmly and rationally? "It was relatively easy for most of us to condemn the allergic-to-truth rantings of former President Donald Trump. His lies were so transparent and prodigious that anyone outside the MAGA-verse could easily see through them. Many of us collectively recoiled at the reality-distortions he spun and how they were lapped up with religious-like zeal by his followers." This is "calmly and rationally" to you? To immediately start a persuasive article by launching into a political rant? Your "rationality" is demonstrated by emotional rantings of somehow who's obviously pretty much as hard to one end of the political spectrum as one can be? Who defines their political beliefs as "the truth", and anyone who believes anything different than them as a evil moronic heathen?
0ct4via 4y ago
To which views are you referring, exactly? TFA switches from a specific political hit (arguably irrelevant to secularism), to teaching creationism in science classes in the US (actually relevant), to a politically-charged and ignorance-fuelled hit piece on so-called "social justice police" and transgender people. Humanist secularism is supposed to be about decrying and dismantling religious dogma, and keeping church and state separate -- and only one of the points above is relevant -- the others are simply personal views of the author, and not actually relevant to secularism or humanism at all.

giantg2 4y ago

Maybe I missed it, but I think the article skipped an important point. Science != policy

engineer_22 4y ago
Unless you code in MatLab, in which case: Science ~= policy

brink 4y ago

To get to the truth, you have to be open-minded. Many modern secularists claim to be open-minded, even the left leaning liberals claim to be open-minded, but they're more closed minded than their ancestors. Everyone wants the great claim of being open-minded without the cost of actually being open-minded. There's an element of sacrifice when it comes to getting to the truth. To actually be open-minded, you have to sacrifice your idealism, which is a lot harder than it seems. Especially since many of our prejudices are hidden to us, and we could spend a lifetime preoccupied with identifying what's true and what's prejudice.

engineer_22 4y ago
How did you get so much Karma?
II2II 4y ago
Idealism, or ideals? Perhaps it is just me, but I view idealism as a state of mind and ideals as what one values. It would be truly sad to sacrifice the former, yet the latter can evolve to reflect the truth.
- brink 4y ago
  Yeah, you're probably right. I'm not very good with words.
guelo 4y ago
This is so condescending, as if the religious and right leaning conservatives are the only brave truth seekers. Many on the left have painful experiences of accepting truths that cause them to cast aside deeply held traditions and cultures, or that tear apart relationships with friends and family. Social conservatives are all about rejecting any truth that might disrupt old traditions or social hierarchies.
- engineer_22 4y ago
  I was with you, but then you committed the same sin as OP. > Social conservatives are all about rejecting any truth that might disrupt old traditions or social hierarchies.

danjc 4y ago

Determinedly divining the real truth while helpfully pointing out the errors of others.

SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
> [Trump always lied and everyone but the MAGA zealots could see it!!!] Yea... I almost tuned out right then. It would have been a FAR stronger article if it took some actual stance on truth, like "If truth actually matters, here are all the times Trump was right and the media lied or kneejerked the other way, so did we go along with it?". I don't like Trump, but that article would have convinced me the author actually cared about objective truth. Instead, it was "You need to follow the truth I agree with!" which is just more post-modernism in the name of something else.
- epgui 4y ago
  Who cares if Trump was right about one or two things? Everything that came out of his mouth was bullshit (in the academic sense of the word [1]). But he said a lot of things, so obviously he’s going to come close to the truth once in a while. These accidents are no cause for celebration. When you care about truth, bullshit is the opposite of what you celebrate, regardless of whether it’s accidentally true or not. [1] The difference between bullshit and lies is that the person who lies tries to cover up of fabricate truth, but the bullshitter doesn’t care about the truth-value of the statements that are made.
  - SV_BubbleTime 4y ago
    I suggested a different path for the exactly the reason you are coming off as as an ideologue now. No one had to bring up Trump, but the author chose to. It makes his argument weaker by saying "WE NEED THE TRUTH!!" but then just talks like someone who spent years with their screen saying "IT'S ALL LIES, HE IS HITLER". As much as I don't like him, it's plain as day that it wasn't "all lies" or "academic bullshit". I work in an industry that was drastically albeit temporarily changed for the better by a couple policy decisions the last admin made, they were shit on endless by the media that was dead-wrong. Seeing it first hand was a noticeable moment for me. Both you and the author can't even take a moment to see past yourself, but that's what the point of the article is about. How bizarre.

Barrin92 4y ago

Secular humanism is and has been on the way out and as a philosophy it's sort of impoverished. The big issue is in the title, namely the simplistic relationship to truth. There's a dinstinction between fact, which is the business of science, and truth which is always contextual. Take the claim from the article: "Truths about the universe don’t depend on which country you are in" Facts about the universe don't care where you're at. Truth which imposes meaning and perspective on facts very much does. By neglecting culture, myth and narrative which are central to how humans make sense of the world this secular perspective becomes completely unappealing, and that's not the fault of the non-enlightened masses but because that worldview is superficial. It also has the tendency to end up with a scientific fatalism that conflates what is and what ought to be. This is usually where secular humanism suddenly turns a little bit dark, and not-so-very-humanist. Also on display in the article when "behavioral genetics" is elevated from something that ought to provide us with tools to increase human agency to something that apparently "determines life outcomes" ("genetic lottery"). That's the point where it's obvious that really the belief system is something closer to scientism, that is to say using science to impose values on people. A belief system that ignored human cultural and religious experience and reduces individuals to a collection of genes is many things, but certainly not humanistic.

engineer_22 4y ago
Secular humanism tastes like cardboard.

felix318 4y ago

“ Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed. “ G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

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ZeroGravitas 4y ago

The blog he referenced was discussed here recently. I can't find the specific discussion, but searching on the domain is probably a good summary: https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=whyevolutionistrue.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=whyevolutionistrue.co... The conclusion in that thread, as I recall, and apparently coming from people in NZ, seemed to be that he was mostly misrepresnting it to generate rage bait, similar to Critical Race Theory discussions.

Negitivefrags 4y ago
I know several science teachers in NZ and there is a very real problem. They are very angry. In the last week my friend who is a physics teacher told me that the most recent offence of the ministry of education is that they will be removing the “data gathering” and “data analysis” parts of the science curriculum. This hasn’t hit the news yet because it’s very fresh and they haven’t actually published the new curriculum yet. It’s also getting a lot of push back from teachers, and so it’s possible that it gets walked back, but the fact that people in control there even think that such a thing is on the table tells you something about the current views of people in charge at the ministry. Many experienced and excellent teachers are resigning because they have had enough.

nati0n 4y ago

Nobody argues that the truth doesn't truly matter.

jawns 4y ago
I have arguments about exactly that with friends who are otherwise very smart, and though they don't come out and say directly that the truth doesn't matter, they say equivalent things, like, "Well that's your truth, but who's to say it's my truth? We can't know for certain what the truth is, so why should we be able to force our version of the truth on someone else?"
- pixl97 4y ago
  I think that is confusing many different things and specifying them as 'truth'. This gets complicated in social situations where opinions firm feedback loops and due to complexity of the causality tree people don't understand if what they are talking about is an opinion or a truth. This gets more complex when you start talking about local maxima versus global maxima, and even comparing local maxima from different locations. Truth is not simplicity and this leads to a lot of social problems between different groups.
- whendoyoushrink 4y ago
  I wish we'd move away from "truth" and uses "facts" and "conclusions" instead. Most really bad ideas take incorrect facts, and use them to draw tenuous conclusions. The examples in the blog are precisely that, the puberty blockers and the Maori traditional knowledge. The elegance of stating "truths" is that the definition of "truth" has always been wishy-washy, to the point it is the vast majority of most philosophy 101 classes. You can have whatever "truth" you like, but you can't choose your facts, and if your conclusions are predicated on bad or simply false facts, your conclusion can be ignored.
- bryananderson 4y ago
  Some truths are objective, others are subjective. “The atomic number of helium is 2” is an objective truth. “The best flavor of ice cream is chocolate” is a subjective truth. It might be my truth, but not yours. Maybe your truth is that strawberry is best. For a more relevant example (not saying you are disagreeing, just that it’s a topic of the article), the fact that someone experiences gender dysphoria may be, in this sense, their truth. It is a question of the individual’s subjective experience. Everyone acknowledges that people have different subjective experiences, but for some reason, when it comes to this specific issue, acknowledging subjective experience is treated as tantamount to declaring that everybody gets to pick their own atomic number for helium.

fibvg 4y ago

0ct4via 4y ago
[flagged]
- splistud 4y ago
- fruit2020 4y ago
- engineer_22 4y ago
  >Even for adults, it doesn't happen without a great deal of psychological analysis, lived experience, multiple concurring psychological reviews, and informed consent. To play the devil's advocate: A minor child cannot provide consent, and that's kind of the problem. --------------- Edit: To give the idea a little more flesh: It's the duty of the of the State to represent the well-being of a child, if the children's parents are unable or unwilling to do so. Let's be hypothetical here and imagine a place where a majority of the People of a State believe "gender affirming care" is not in a child's best interest, then you could have a situation where the State is compelled to do what was done in Texas. Are the majority of people in Texas of the belief that "gender affirming care" is not in a child's best interest? I don't know, but it seems plausible. Is "gender affirming care", in truth, the best thing for a child? I don't know. I don't know how to even start to approach that question in an acceptable way.
  - 0ct4via 4y ago
    What do you achieve by making that argument? I was literally referring to adults and bottom surgery, because *bottom surgery isn't being performed on children*. The problem is that you missed the point entirely.
    - 4y ago

apienx 4y ago

Isamov has this great "Relativity of wrong" piece that counters post-modernism. It's often the case that one of us is closer to the truth, even if both of us are wrong. https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dbalmer/eportfolio/Nature%2520of%2520Science_Asimov.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwiUjqq6o977AhXI_aQKHWCtDz8QFnoECBkQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2cdD4Zh4pBQOxMvjShNr8P https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dbalmer/eportfolio/Nature%2520of%...

tehnub 4y ago
Isaac Asimov -> Isamov :)
omginternets 4y ago
I'm getting a 404.
- 0ct4via 4y ago
  It's up for me, but there's a Wayback Machine copy at http://web.archive.org/web/20221121134310/https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~dbalmer/eportfolio/Nature%20of%20Science_Asimov.pdf http://web.archive.org/web/20221121134310/https://www.sas.up...
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[deleted]

ttpphd 4y ago

This blogpost is not fairly representing the current state of the conversation about care for transgender kids. That is dishonest behavior and as a secular humanist I feel obligated to call in and present a fuller picture. https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/3/e2022056567/188709/Sex-Assigned-at-Birth-Ratio-Among-Transgender-and https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article/150/3/e20220... "Our findings from a national sample of adolescents across 16 states reveal that the sex assigned at birth ratio of transgender adolescents does not favor transgender adolescents assigned female sex at birth." The claims of social contagion and so on have been examined and they just aren't true. It is also wrong to represent that level of uncertainty about puberty blockers, which have been and continue to be used by cis children for years without a peep or a poop from those currently in a panic about trans kids on puberty blockers. It is also paternalistic and authoritarian to say that weighing risks and benefits of puberty blockers should be done by culture warrior politicians rather than a conversation between a patient and a doctor. The data are in, the debate is settled: it's simply a moral panic and it harms real people to pretend there are enough open questions to merit further discussion. You're just being a bigot who refuses to acknowledge empirical reality at that point, not a secular humanist. 1 out of 4 stars.

savingsPossible 4y ago
> In Europe, some medical groups have discouraged or limited the use of puberty blockers.[17] Following the Bell v Tavistock decision by the High Court of Justice for England and Wales, in which the High Court ruled children under 16 were not competent to give informed consent to puberty blockers — overturned by the Court of Appeal in September 2021 — Sweden's Karolinska Institute, administrator of the second-largest hospital system in the country, announced in March 2021 that it would discontinue providing puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to children under 16. Additionally, the Karolinska Institute changed its policy to cease providing puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones to teenagers 16–18, outside of approved clinical trials.[82] On 22 February 2022, Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare said that puberty blockers should only be used in "exceptional cases" and said that their use is backed by "uncertain science".[19] However, other providers in Sweden continue to provide puberty blockers and in Sweden, a clinician's professional judgment determines what treatments are recommended or not recommended. Youth are able to access gender-affirming care when doctors deem it medically necessary. The treatment is not banned in Sweden, unlike in Alabama and Arkansas, and is offered as part of its national healthcare service.[19][83][84] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puberty_blocker#Legal_and_political_challenges https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puberty_blocker#Legal_and_poli... Puberty blockers are not a settled matter in the medical community. > It is also wrong to represent that level of uncertainty about puberty blockers, which have been and continue to be used by cis children for years without a peep or a poop from those currently in a panic about trans kids on puberty blockers. the effects of blocking early puberty might be very different that those of blocking "in time" puberty I wonder if it was me... If I was trans, would I be desperate, and pissed about people trying to dispassionately discuss issues that would greatly affect my life. Maybe... But it seems like a general rule: to get to a good decision, we always need dispassionate discussion. Usually for much a greater time than the passionate people would give us.

boeingUH60 4y ago

A short story: I once was recruited by an acquaintance to work on the social media campaign of a local politician contesting for the governorship election. Mind you, this isn't the US or any western country but a third-world nation. I was a college student on break, so it was an easy way to make some money...nothing wrong I thought. Well, time to start work, and it turns out it isn't as straightforward as I thought. This social media campaign involved creating fake Twitter accounts with AI-generated photos as profile pictures and pushing stories supporting the politician. I've always hated social media and wasn't too familiar, so I thought, does this even work? Well, yeah, it worked. We pushed frankly bogus stories and overtly biased posts and many of them got to the Twitter front page for users in my country. Even I was shocked how those posts had a considerable impact, and the politician ended up winning the election. This work thought me a great lesson; quit social media because you're being manipulated everywhere. Mind you, this was a small operation with less than two dozen persons. Imagine what someone with a massive budget, let's say Putin or MBS, could achieve by building a propaganda farm employing thousands...It's definitely hard to discern truth when everyone is being fed a large stream of propaganda at every second. As for me, I quit social media or any type of news...I'm not confident in my abilities to discern truth when there are dedicated teams of psy-op operators trying to manipulate me. If you think you're smart enough to counter such efforts, good luck to you, but as for me, I think the human brain did not evolve to handle mass media positively.

pixl97 4y ago
Dead internet theory becomes more true every day. It's morphed into the mountains of madness where if described 100 years ago we would consider it an eldritch horror.
- Avicebron 4y ago
  an addictive panopticon
islanderfun 4y ago
Very interesting story. Quitting social media is something I've thought countless times. But after reading this I can't help but think what if this comment is a psy-op operation. Very meta and inside my own head. Which can be a goal in of itself.

1attice 4y ago

pstuart 4y ago
Your journey is is literally the epitome of self-governance, and yet the party that ostensibly advocates for more self-governance seems to fear you and others on that journey as the top threat to society today. The only way that makes sense is when viewed with a cynical eye: people are spooked by "not normal", and spooked people are more easily manipulated. It's disgusting on so many levels.
- poszlem 4y ago
  You can both say that people should be able to self-govern themselves and at the same time have a cut-off age before which they should not. The trans debate would be much less heated if it did not involve other people's children.
  - pstuart 4y ago
    I have to imagine it's got to be painful and challenging as a parent to go through that. Obviously this is not to be done lightly but it seems like it's ultimately the business of the child, their doctor, and their parents. > The trans debate would be much less heated if it did not involve other people's children. Oh really? What about bathrooms? I hear that trans people love to go to bathrooms and molest children.
    - poszlem 4y ago
      I can assure you that any discussion that involves other people's children is on another level of heat when compared to even the most heated debate about bathrooms.
    - bbbbbp 4y ago
      Are you referring to incidents like this: https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/4002789/morrisons-sex-attack-girl-fife-transgender-katie-dolatowski https://www.thescottishsun.co.uk/news/4002789/morrisons-sex-...? If so, these are rare, and aren't the main reason why most people want to keep certain spaces as sex-segregated.

Brendinooo 4y ago

> We needed more than ancient books and the near universal buy-in by everyone else to convince us that supernaturalism is real. We needed empirical evidence. I wish people were more honest about the inherent contradiction in that assertion. Isn’t the point of “supernatural” that it will exist outside of empiricism (depending on how you define that)?

gwd 4y ago
> Isn’t the point of “supernatural” that it will exist outside of empiricism (depending on how you define that)? Um, no? "Supernatural" just implies that there's something outside the "natural". To the NPCs in World of Warcraft, you are supernatural, since you exist outside the rules of their system. There are certainly some Christians who say that faith requires the absence of evidence; "Blessed are those who have not seen, and yet believed." But if you actually read the New Testament, that's not what the early Christians taught; on the contrary, they were all about evidence. None of the original disciples had the blessedness of believing without seeing, so it clearly cannot be a requirement for a genuine faith.
- doliveira 4y ago
  What? "Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see."
  - gwd 4y ago
    And yet earlier in the very same work, that author says: "This salvation, which was first announced by the Lord, was confirmed to us by those who heard him. God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will." (Hebrews 2:3b-4) Here he presents three types of evidence which are meant to corroborate Jesus' words: 1. The eyewitness testimony of the original disciples 2. Testimony from God, in the form of signs, wonders, and various miracles 3. Evidence of the Holy Spirit in the early Christians. I don't personally see that the world is round; or that microbes and viruses exist and make me sick; or any number of other things which modern science tells us. Yet I have assurance that they are true. That's the kind of faith the authors of the New Testament are recommending (including the author which you quote).

chasID7 4y ago

Truth is overwhelmingly inconvenient. Unlikely to draw advertising or funding from "stakeholders". Lip service on the other hand, is cheap and ubiqutious. Perfect for the limited lifespan of the average stakeholder. Education does not check self-interest, nor does wealth. "History" is cherrypicked and spun to useless effect. "Chip Wars" a case in point. That leaves a single useful guide: Biology of life on this moonmeld. That record is full of interesting studies and lessons. Also highly inconvenient. Portents poor for all sects of Humanists :(

jondeval 4y ago

Secular humanism in its more radical and moderate forms since the French revolution has always been subject to the direct and straightforward criticism that as a philosophy it will eventually lead to an erosion of a shared reference frame and eventually an erosion of sanity itself. What if this societal rejection of Truth that we are witnessing (and is summarized well by the article) is the direct result of the success of secular humanism? I think this is the elephant in the room.

jay_kyburz 4y ago
People don't know what to believe because of a lack of trust and faith in our authority figures. People don't believe what the government is telling them. Our governments are too big and not transparent enough. News media sacrificed their authority and trust when they decided to choose a side rather than say neutral. Reporting "the truth" is a for profit business where making slight adjustments to your perception of the truth results in more profit. If you don't trust the church, the government, or the news, where are you supposed to get your truth?

through_heart 4y ago

No. The truth doesn't matter. The fact does. The ruth is the majority people's view of a certain fact, and it is still subjective. What really matters is to allow people speak out their truth.

BaronVonSteuben 4y ago

I've made this argument to many progressive friends, and nearly all of them replied with a variant of "you're 'bothsides'ing this" which apparently is supposed to mean your argument is invalid. That then leads to me pointing out that world isn't a clear binary and "both (major) sides" can be wrong or have problems. For some reason though, that seems to be the end of the conversation and no progress toward reaching agreement is made.

deleted 4y ago
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ReactiveJelly 4y ago

The Internet has the same incentive landscape as bathroom stall graffiti. That's why you're so mad, Robyn. This isn't a back-and-forth between two real people who mutually respect each other. If I was talking to Robyn in real life, over coffee, for 2 or 3 hours, we'd probably get something productive done. But online, it's a hit-and-run dumpster where the truth matters a little, and humor and presentation matter _much more._ Robyn writes their wounded-gazelle piece whining about the woke cancel mob, and I try to 'clap back' without 'seething'. Wittgenstein would roll in his grave to see the level of MLG language gamers we have online these days. Nuance gets buried online. I am not gonna sit here and write a boring screen-long essay expressing my nuanced thoughts on the rights of trans adults and trans children, to an audience that might literally be reading this on the shitter. It works fine for less-controversial topics like Rust vs C. It just doesn't work for gender. They who write on shit-house walls... P.S. - If you have 2 hours to spare for nuance, I highly recommend the Contrapoints video about J. K. Rowling. This is a good, calm, nuanced discussion about why LGBTQ people and our allies don't like Rowling as much as we used to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gDKbT_l2us https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gDKbT_l2us If you don't have 2 hours to spare, then you aren't gonna get nuance, sorry to tell you.

0ct4via 4y ago
I'd be curious as to what your views are, since you so eloquently wrote your previous lines, but then basically refused to share your own views. I wouldn't necessary recomment ContraPoints as a "calm, nuanced discussion" when it comes to these issues when Natalie Wynn (who portrays various characters as Contrapoints) takes issue with gender-neutral language (invalidating non-binary people), entertains and employs transphobic views, and fails to even understand gender properly[1]. [1] https://alyesque.medium.com/how-contrapoints-misunderstands-gender-bd833cc6d8c8 https://alyesque.medium.com/how-contrapoints-misunderstands-... The nuance involved takes a lot more than a ContraPoints video to go through, and would be better served with both a different source and topic than the video you linked.

imbnwa 4y ago

Somewhere in Hell, Nietzsche is laughing his ass off at the contemporary socio-political landscape. Everything he had to say about 'Nihilism' (which is quite the opposite of 'lack of belief in anything') and 'The Last Man' (who, to paraphrase, "has figured out happiness... and blinks") came true.