Many liberals celebrated when Hamtramck, Michigan, elected a Muslim-majority council in 2015 but a vote to exclude LGBTQ+ flags from city property has soured relations
In 2015, many liberal residents in Hamtramck, Michigan, celebrated as their city became the first in the United States to elect a Muslim-majority city council. They viewed the power shift and diversity as a meaningful rebuke of the Islamophobic rhetoric of then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign. This week many of those same residents watched in dismay as a now fully Muslim and socially conservative city council passed legislation banning Pride flags from being flown on city property that had – like many others being flown around the country – been intended to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community.
Irrational, yes, but not fundamentally so. Without supernatural beliefs, they’d have to at least think that they care about empirical reality. Their beliefs would be falsifiable, whether they’re willing to acknowledge it or not.
When you throw religion into the mix, though, you can’t even guarantee that much. Were the beliefs of Heaven’s Gate wrong? I’d like to think so. Can I prove that? Not in the slightest, because supernatural beliefs like their founders’ “revelations” are fundamentally unfalsifiable. For all we know, there’s still a chance they were right, and that all 8 billion of the rest of us are still under the thumb of the “Luciferians”.
That fundamental inability to be reasoned with, which I would consider fundamentally irrationality, is unique to supernatural beliefs. Even if they don’t take it nearly as far, it’s still a concern I have with other religions. I’d like for people’s moral beliefs judgements to at least be ostensibly possible to reason with.
EDIT: “belief” is a bit too nebulous on second thought.
Irrational, yes, but not fundamentally so. Without supernatural beliefs, they’d have to at least think that they care about empirical reality. Their beliefs would be falsifiable, whether they’re willing to acknowledge it or not. […]
That fundamental inability to be reasoned with, which I would consider fundamentally irrationality, is unique to supernatural beliefs.
i just do not think this at all nor do i think falsifiability is a meaningful consideration in this conversation (because people do not care about falsifiability, i’m sorry. to my knowledge this is well studied and the bulk of those studies show that proving someone wrong seldom influences their opinions in any meaningful way). you don’t even have to get harmful here: just try reasoning with a person who thinks Pluto should still be a planet at this point about why it isn’t. there is no rational underlying justification to continue to believe this, yet people will go so far as to say the Whole of Science got it wrong and there is no argument you can make to convince them. people will gladly die on fundamentally irrational hills and fundamentally be incapable of being talked out of defending those hills with or without religion. this is not a supernatural thing.
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Irrational, yes, but not fundamentally so. Without supernatural beliefs, they’d have to at least think that they care about empirical reality. Their beliefs would be falsifiable, whether they’re willing to acknowledge it or not.
When you throw religion into the mix, though, you can’t even guarantee that much. Were the beliefs of Heaven’s Gate wrong? I’d like to think so. Can I prove that? Not in the slightest, because supernatural beliefs like their founders’ “revelations” are fundamentally unfalsifiable. For all we know, there’s still a chance they were right, and that all 8 billion of the rest of us are still under the thumb of the “Luciferians”.
That fundamental inability to be reasoned with, which I would consider fundamentally irrationality, is unique to supernatural beliefs. Even if they don’t take it nearly as far, it’s still a concern I have with other religions. I’d like for people’s moral
beliefsjudgements to at least be ostensibly possible to reason with.EDIT: “belief” is a bit too nebulous on second thought.
i just do not think this at all nor do i think falsifiability is a meaningful consideration in this conversation (because people do not care about falsifiability, i’m sorry. to my knowledge this is well studied and the bulk of those studies show that proving someone wrong seldom influences their opinions in any meaningful way). you don’t even have to get harmful here: just try reasoning with a person who thinks Pluto should still be a planet at this point about why it isn’t. there is no rational underlying justification to continue to believe this, yet people will go so far as to say the Whole of Science got it wrong and there is no argument you can make to convince them. people will gladly die on fundamentally irrational hills and fundamentally be incapable of being talked out of defending those hills with or without religion. this is not a supernatural thing.