Peterdjones comments on Holy Books (Or Rationalist Sequences) Don’t Implement Themselves - Less Wrong

32 Post author: calcsam 10 May 2011 07:15AM

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Comment author: Peterdjones 12 May 2011 02:08:02PM 1 point [-]

a glance at a typical Unitarian web page will show a comprehensive and consistent list of left-wing ideological positions.

Dictatorship of the Proletariat? Class struggle? Ownership of the means of Production? Universal Free Healthcare, even?

Or did you mean the kind of lpoliicies that count as "left wing" in the US, and liberal/moderate/centre-left everywhere else.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 12 May 2011 05:30:42PM *  10 points [-]

Or did you mean the kind of lpoliicies that count as "left wing" in the US, and liberal/moderate/centre-left everywhere else.

"Everywhere else"? I hate to break the news, but there are other places under the Sun besides the Anglosphere and Western Europe! In most of the world, both by population and surface area, and including some quite prosperous and civilized places, many UU positions would be seen as unimaginably extremist. (Try arguing their favored immigration policies to the Japanese, for example.)

You are however correct that in other Western/Anglospheric countries, the level of ideological uniformity in the political mainstream is far higher than in the U.S., and their mainstream is roughly similar to the UU doctrine on many issues, though not all. (Among their intellectual elites, on the other hand, Unitarian Universalism might as well be the established religion.)

In any case, I didn't say that the UUs had the most extreme left-wing positions on everything. On the contrary, what they espouse is roughly somewhere on the left fringe of the mainstream, and more radical leftist positions are certainly conceivable (and held by some small numbers of people). What is significant for the purposes of this discussion is the apparent ideological uniformity, not the content of their doctrine. My points would hold even if their positions were anywhere to the left or right of the present ones, as long as they were equally uniform.

Comment author: Emile 12 May 2011 07:07:57PM *  4 points [-]

There are some conservative Universal Unitarians, which seems to indicate that there isn't complete ideological uniformity.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 12 May 2011 09:29:57PM *  4 points [-]

Point taken, and thanks for the interesting link. Googling around a bit more, it seems like there are a few groups like these, but they are small and extreme outliers without influence and status. Before writing my above comments, I checked out the links on the first few search pages that come up when you google "Unitarian Universalist," and I definitely encountered perfectly predictable and uniform positions advocated on those.

Comment author: Emile 13 May 2011 07:51:35AM 4 points [-]

In case you haven't encountered him before, Peter A Taylor, the author of that FAQ has some interesting articles on religion and politics: Rational Religion, The Market for Sanctimony, or Yet Another Space Alien Cult, What Does "Morality" Mean?, etc. - he apparently is a reader of LessWrong.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 13 May 2011 07:27:03PM 4 points [-]

Yes, I have rummaged around his website already. There is some interesting stuff there.

Interestingly, in the "Market for Sanctimony" article, he confirms my impressions about Unitarian Universalism, contrary to the claims of User:handoflixue:

Officially, UU does not have a creed. A consequence of this is that any psychological needs that depend on getting together with co-believers are likely to be frustrated at a UU church. This in turn leads people to promote hard left-wing politics as an unofficial creed. [...] Thus a church that prides itself on not asking people to check their minds at the door ends up doing it anyway, just in a different fashion.

Comment author: handoflixue 19 May 2011 02:15:35AM 3 points [-]

he confirms my impressions about Unitarian Universalism, contrary to the claims of User:handoflixue:

My claim was about unquestionable dogma, and the UUs as a whole. I'm not sure how we can still be having this debate after someone else provided you links to UUs who question the dogma...