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Viliam_Bur comments on Open Thread, September 23-29, 2013 - Less Wrong Discussion
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They are just humans, aren't they? I am afraid that at this moment it is impossible to assemble a large group of people who would all think on LW-level. Not including obvious bullshit, or at least not making it a core of group beliefs, is already a pretty decent result for a large group of humans.
Perhaps one day CFAR will make a curricullum that can replicate rationality quickly (at least on suitable individuals) and then we can try to expand rationality to mass level. Until then, having a group without obviously insane people in power is probably the best you can get.
You already reflected on this, so just: don't emotionally expect what is not realistic. They are never going to use reason as you define it. But the good news is that they will not punish you for using reason. Which is the best you can expect from a religious group.
I found this comment very helpful. Thanks.
You inspired me to google whether there are UU in Slovakia. None found, although there are some in the neighbor countries: Czech, Hungary.
I wonder whether it would be possible to create a local branch here, to draw people, who just want to feel something religious but don't want to belong to a strict organization, away from Catholicism (which in my opinion has huge negative impacts on the country). There seem to be enough such people here, but they are not organized, so they usually stay within the churches of their parents.
The problem is, I am not the right person to start something like this, because I don't feel any religious need; for me the UU would be completely boring and useless. I am not sure if I could pretend interest at least for long enough to collect a group of people, make them interested in the idea, put them into contact with neighbor UUs, and then silently sneak away. ;-)
Also, I suspect the religion is not about ideas, but about organized community. (For example, the only reason you are interested in UU is because your fiancee is. And your fiancee probably has similar reasons, etc.) Starting a new religious community where no support exists, would need a few people willing to sacrifice a lot of time and work -- in other words, true believers. Later, when the community exists, further recruitment should be easier.
Well, at least this is the first social engineering project I feel I could have higher than 1% chance of doing successfully, if I decided to. (Level 3 of Yudkowsky Ambition Scale in a local scope?)
Here are some things you should know:
Unitarian Universalism is different from Unitarianism. UU is basically a spin-off of Unitarianism from when they combined with Universalism in 1961 in North America. As a result, there are very few UU churches outside of NA.
Unitarianism is on average more Christian than UU, and there exist some UU congregations that also have a Christian slant. (The one I was talking about is not one of them) I have also heard that some UU churches are considerably more tolerant of everything other than Christianity than they are of Christianity. (Probably because their members were escaping Christianity) The views change from congregation to congregation because they are decided from the bottom up from the local congregants.
The UUA has free resources, such as transcribed sermons you could read, for people who wanted to start a congregation.
I think I gain some stuff from it that is not directly from my fiancee. I don't know if it is enough to continue going on my own. It is a community that roughly follows strategy 1 of the belief signalling trilemma, which I think is nice to be in some of the time. The sermons are usually way too vague, but have produced interesting thoughts when I added details to them on my own and then analyzed my version. There is also (respectful) debating, which I think I find fun regardless of who I am debating with. I like how it enables people to share significant highs or lows in their life, so the community can help them. There are pot-lucks and game nights, and courses on philosophy and religions. There is also singing, which I am not so crazy about, but my fiancee loves.