Why does everybody seem to be so worked up about whether religion is true or not and call it theism or atheism? My Central European experience is that it is largely an institution, custom, habit, social expectation, identity, a way of expressing things and all that, but people did not really believe for 150 years at least, so it is not really something meant to be true for a long time now. I know there are people in the US Bible Belt who still mean it, and they have angry atheist children, but how comes the majority of Internet discussion kinda revolves around them? How many people on LW want to approach the topic from the angle Max Weber and similar scholars did?
I know there are people in the US Bible Belt who still mean it, and they have angry atheist children, but how comes the majority of Internet discussion kinda revolves around them?
I'd assumed that was a side effect of North American hegemony of the Anglophone Internet.
But now I notice I don't actually know how people talk about religion on websites not dominated by Americans or Anglophones. Is there more focus on analysis or on normative judgement? If the latter, do people judge local religious institutions rather than American religion? Or is the target...
This thread is for asking any questions that might seem obvious, tangential, silly or what-have-you. Don't be shy, everyone has holes in their knowledge, though the fewer and the smaller we can make them, the better.
Please be respectful of other people's admitting ignorance and don't mock them for it, as they're doing a noble thing.
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