Zanderax t1_j11abk8 wrote on December 20, 2022 at 10:58 PM

Reply to comment by NicNicNicHS in Do no conform: Ralph Waldo Emerson's essay Self-Reliance argues that we should strive for greatness and self-reliance rather than the "meanness" of conforming to the society's dead institutions saying that "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind" by thelivingphilosophy

I think that indoctrination is more multifaceted than that. For example, how can there be Christian physicists and cosmologists when basically all scientific findings counteract the bible? It's because people can have cognitive dissonance to be a indoctrinated fool in one aspect while being a free thinker in another.

Yes almost everyone in the past were indoctrinated into stupid, illogical traditions but that didn't prevent them from being wise and accurate in other areas of knowledge. We shouldn't take past wisdom as gospel but we should learn from it.

NicNicNicHS t1_j11b6if wrote on December 20, 2022 at 11:04 PM

I'm not saying that people in past generations were wrong on everything.

The problems arise when there's these extremely common justifications of "well they knew what they were doing" or simply, "it's tradition/how it's always been done", which are huge issues.

A lot of tradition is either originally arbitrary, arising from social contexts that no longer exist, or basically tools of control, and I think that we keep giving tradition too much credit.

Zanderax t1_j11c4b8 wrote on December 20, 2022 at 11:11 PM

Definitely agree with all of that. Tradition is almost always a bad reason to continue to do something unless it's harmless fun like Christmas or New Years. Even then things like New Years fireworks are actually really bad for the environment and public health.

thewimsey t1_j1203dc wrote on December 21, 2022 at 2:09 AM

Tradition is also a bad reason to not follow tradition.

Zanderax t1_j1218w5 wrote on December 21, 2022 at 2:18 AM

Wat?

ndhl83 t1_j1495ke wrote on December 21, 2022 at 3:43 PM

> For example, how can there be Christian physicists and cosmologists when basically all scientific findings counteract the bible?

This isn't a well thought out position to maintain, as there is technically no disconnect between observable and measurable science and the notion of a (possible) creator deity/deities since the presupposition there would simply be that our science is the practice of understanding the world/universe/multiverse that was made by that deity. Science, in this regard, effectively becomes a branch of theology (for those who subscribe both to religion and the sciences). The science (as understood today) also doesn't change just because I may not believe in a creator god origin...I could believe in spontaneous existence or a non-deity "alien" creator and the measurement of forces and chemical compositions of substances remain the same, regardless.

To that end, a devout physicist or chemist or biologist is just plying their trade to understand the world they believe was made by their supposed creator. The hypothesis, measurements, and conclusions don't really care what the genesis of the subject was, we're just trying to understand what is in front of us.

I'm saying this as an agnostic secularist and not a practicing anything...as far as I know we have not disproven any possibility of a "creator god" with science, we've just gotten really really good at dissecting and explaining how (some) things in the natural world work...even if we can't always conclusively say where they came from, or why.