Vaniver comments on Rationality Quotes Thread May 2015 - Less Wrong

9 Post author: Vaniver 01 May 2015 02:31PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 27 May 2015 02:33:41PM *  3 points [-]

This... really shows how wide is the Atlantic. I know many Europeans who identify with being Christians, but in all of the cases it is just a way to show their national loyalty, their national identity, their conservatism or their opposition to modern culture, their preference for a higher value system that does not worship money and business and consumption but has a more human-faced, soul-oriented, "deeper" approach. This is how they are Christians. Nobody, literally nobody I know has literal faith, the kind of faith people would pray with. The closest to that is having a faith in Christian values being useful for human growth because they remind people that money and consumption is not all.

So it is always surprising to me that America has pockets where faith is still alive pretty much in the old, pre-1800 sense, as if Voltaire, Hegel, Feuerbach or Marx never happened. Where it is not a culture or identity or values, but literally faith.

Or maybe these pockets exist here too, but the newspapers are not writing about them and I have no idea where they are.

Comment author: Vaniver 27 May 2015 03:18:27PM 1 point [-]

America has pockets

Pockets? It's between a quarter and half of the US, depending on how you put the threshold for "literal faith." Secularization is also mostly hollowing out the 'mainline' denominations, that are more European in their presentation of things, while the hardcore denominations are growing.

Comment author: [deleted] 28 May 2015 07:09:24AM 0 points [-]

Yes but is it faith or a culture of values?

This is very easy to determine. The kind of cultural Christianity that is going on here is basically like conservative guys saying "XY is against a Christian system / order of values". They are not saying "Jesus/Bible said no". Are these people saying the former or the laer?

Comment author: Vaniver 28 May 2015 12:28:06PM 1 point [-]

Mike Huckabee:

I didn't get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn't have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives.