For Better or Worse, Liberalism is a Relgion, not just a Political Philosophy

I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad thing - there's nothing wrong with religion (We're all religious in terms of having a belief system, regardless of some of us denying it). But let's acknowledge the reality that statism (the worship of the state, i.e. liberalism) is in fact a religion.


Here's the rationale:

- People need some sort of religion - i.e. a belief system. You can be an atheist, but you're still going to have a belief system of sorts, it's in our nature to try to find meaning for things.
- Liberals are generally more atheist/agnostic - this is statistical. There are atheist conservatives, and there are Christian liberals, but there are more atheist liberals than there are atheist conservatives
- When you have no belief system - you must find one. Some of us like to pretend we're nihilists/moral relativists - the reality is we've been conditioned over the millions of years to need some sort of grounding. Right from wrong, in other words.
- Thus statism is founded to replace religion for many liberals - the worship of the state as the arbiter of good and evil. In other words, the rule of law. Rather than a mythical character (real or not) such as Jesus distributing values, liberals tend to turn towards the government to administer "justice".

Edit: Evolution has wired our brains to find meaning in things, in order to explain a complicated world (too complicated for any of us). I personally believe there is such a thing as truth, but please don't pretend you're an "enlightened atheist" just because you can state the obvious "we have no proof of God existing."

 

You can believe in something religiously, but for something to be a religion, it needs a deity, a supernatural deity. The OP is very convoluted.

 

I hate busting out technical definitions of things, because, well, that's annoying, but I have to here:

Religion is a cultural system of behaviors and practices, world views, sacred texts, holy places, ethics, and societal organisation that relate humanity to what an anthropologist has called "an order of existence".

Obviously statism doesn't have sacred texts (unless you count Karl Marx, kidding! Kidding!) but it has the other aspects. All based around the state being their God - the arbiter of justice/morality.

Don't kid yourself - semantics aside, it's a religion.

 

You use words pretty much as you please here. I don't know why you define all belief systems as 'religions' - except it works for your post. I don't know why you equate a nihilist with a moral relativist - except it works for your post. Then you toss in the noun 'worship', and modify it with the adjective phrase "of the state' as if to give your premise more credibility without a clue what it truly means to worship anything.

The effect of all this is to really to dilute the meaning of faith, to dilute the meaning of what religion is and what it does in peoples lives, and to dilute what it means to actually worship.

You sure do not understand what it is to hold and assert a series of beliefs about politics, economics and social movements. Its comes from a different place than religious or spiritual worship.

 

Kid myself? I'm letting you kid me. Calling a political ideology a religion is a giant stretch of the imagination. Not worthy of discussion. Now, if you want to claim that liberals (or any other group) are so fervent in their beliefs as to follow them religiously, then we can talk. But comparing liberalism to church is inane.

 

See post #3. The reality is the state functions much like Jesus did - caring for the poor, administering justice (in this life or the next). The only core difference is that the state is a literal (present) idol for worship, whereas Jesus is a past, individual figure.

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That's your opinion. I gave you the definition of a religion. Feel free to break down the problem you have with the comparison.

 

Man made global warming or, climate change, is a religion. Believing in a higher purpose in suspension of proof is what makes it so; and if you need a deity look no further than Al Gore.

 

IMO that's a shallow comparison. Global warming (which I believe in) is but one aspect of typical liberal beliefs. It's not their guiding principle - just one of many derivatives of it.

 

First this definition of religion is pretty broad. Frankly all governmental institutions can fit it and all ideologies that predominate in a region can fit it. Hell, the 'sub culture' in NFL can be compared to a religious cult if you are willing to drop the Holy place and the sacred text! As I said. You use words as you please and pick definitions that will cooperate with you.

by the way, Religion is not synonomous with
Christianity and Jesus did not administer justice. His Pop may have upstairs , but Jesus was in no position to 'administer justice'.

 

It is a broad definition (but it was taken straight from the dictionary). That's the point - people need a belief system. We're conditioned to try to make meaning of a seemingly nonsense-filled world. I am targetting the atheists/agnostics who think they're above the fray.

 

Except not all liberal beliefs are based on 'scientific' conjecture.

 

Absolutely agreed

 

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No it isn't. What you have given is your rationalizations of why you think liberalism is a religion, but that's hardly conclusive or evidently. It's your opinion. It makes a good enough analogy though.

 

I am an atheist. I have not heard many atheists deny a human desire for order, or a belief system as its foundation. The question becomes what shall we base the belief system primarily on. Religious faith tends to extend that order and belief system past a physical and material reality to an abstract one after death which is where we part company. We don't see much evidence on which to do so.

the mere fact that we as a species, have historically filled some political and pscho-social needs by creating religions and
Gods, does not mean that all of our ideas and resulting institutions, that fill political and pyscho-social needs are religions.

 

There has to be a moral aspect to it, but I'm not so sure a supernatural deity is required. If you want a deity, you have the state and politicians.

 

I prefer to stick to our world when describing religion. I view a solid belief in some afterlife, much like atheists do, as just another way to administer justice. The only difference is statism wants to administer perceived justice now, whereas Christianity for instance tells you to wait for justice.

I'm not trying to rag on atheism/agnosticism. As I said to another poster, I just want them to put their beliefs in context and realize their beliefs aren't different from religious folk at the core.

 

I don't even like Scrabble. I'm not interested in playing word games with you.

Show me the churches, the sacred texts, the rituals, the prayers, the afterlife, resurrection, creation myth, judgement day, supernatural beings, priests, commandments, universal order, yin, yang, prophets, saints, artwork, the meaning of life, heaven, hell, purgatory. Jesus-h...show me a televangelist begging for millions because god was going to take him; show me any of those things, and you'll have a point. Of course, you're describing politics, not religion. You may as well compare business to religion, baseball to religion, the NRA to religion. No sane person has difficulty knowing the difference between religion and politics. Catholicism is a religion. Southern Baptist is a religion. Hinduism is a religion. The Tories, Whigs, Bloc Québécois, Democrats and Republicans are/were political parties. Religions raise money by offering temples, ritual services and spiritual experiences. Political parties raise money by offering candidates for election to various levels of government office. Church people go to church to sing, pray, and socialize. Politicians meet in various ways to engage in deal making, while possibly socializing. Liberal and conservative alike. It's politics, not church. Give it up. Playing word games is a pathetic attempt as rational discussion. Stick to reality.

 

I realize what you prefer to do. We disagree about where the core is. The core of religious belief, as opposed to secular systems of belief, is that it does not settle for providing order and justice in our material world, using the entities we find in our material world. It extends its reach beyond that material world we have evidence for, and moves all those goal posts way off the football field.

And no Christianity does not tell you to wait for justice or society wait for justice. . It tells you that sometimes 'justice' in a moral or religious sense, has to wait. Its a very different concept.

 

Statism is a relatively new religion - people have only been experimenting with defining their belief structures in this way for the last 100 years or so. Prior religions have had thousands of years to develop temples, scriptures and the like.

In the short span of a century - we've seen the same characteristics of statism that are attributed to religions. You say stick to "reality", whatever that means in this context. Ok.

1. We've seen an ideology based on statism - namely communism - go on a practical crusade via the USSR in which tens of millions of non-believers were wiped out. If you didn't follow the statist orthodoxy, you were killed.
2. We've seen leftist politicians, who pander to their masses of believers just like priests do in Catholicism, increasing taxes to pay for welfare (to correct a perceived injustice in wealth disparity)
3. We've seen a mass group of people who accept evolution (like I do) as a reality, without reading into the nuances of it to the point where they don't understand how evolution has really functioned.
4. We've seen a certain segment of the population condemning those who pursue wealth (just like Jesus) as immoral and/or evil.

You're dead wrong. Statism is still in its infancy, but it functions much like most new religions do when originally founded - it spreads fast, appeals to a large segment of the population as a guide for how to conduct affairs, and I'll also note that it has been notoriously violent. It'll be interesting to see how statism develops over the next 50 years or so.

 

You are confusing functionality with definition. Government is all about organizing society around a set of beliefs to create order and to structure collective activity. That is true of tribes, monarchies, cities, and school districts. Ideology describes the secular beliefs used to accomplish this. They can be conservative, liberal, fascist, or socialist. Other institutions function in much the same way to create order and to structure collective activity. Religious or spiritual faith describes non-secular beliefs used to accomplish this. Organized religion is the institutional structure that is used to accomplish this. That does not make religion synonymous with government, let alone ideology, let alone a specific ideology.

 

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The deciding factor in any religious belief is faith insofar that the belief is not contingent on proof or evidence. But even then, faith is not always religion. You can have faith in your partner's fidelity, faith in yourself and faith that a cab driver knows where they are going. It would be a mistake to confuse, faith, trust and loyalty with a principle or ideology as a measure of religion.

 

Not trying to skip your entire quote, but I think the meat of it is in the italicized part. Yes, I agree, religion is only one such instiution. My personal observation has been that many liberals/secularists do indeed worship the state as a deity. Maybe you don't - good for you. You're *mostly* alone in that - most secular liberals grovel at the feet of the state.

On a side note, the rise of Christianity was in part a reaction to a similar rapidly changing environment. People needed not just an explanation as to what was going on, but also something to unite each other in terms of beliefs - that's largely why the Romans adopted Christianity as their new official religion. So you're wrong in separating "religion" from a belief system designed to create order and structure collective activity. It is one of the core traits of a religion.

I don't think your view is shallow - you've explained yourself very well. But for someone who seems pretty pragmatic I think you're being willingly blinded by trying to so narrowly define what constitutes a religion. All religions have been designed to structure the world here - beliefs in the afterlife etc. are almost secondary to the actual practical applications of religion in societies.

 

And I could claim that conservatives worship profit. I can claim the conservatives are so blinded by their adoration of their Holy Spirit of Profit that acquiring and retaining personal and corporate wealth is actually their religion. Conservatives and libertarians are basically religious zealots who do not realize how similar they are, in mentality to an Islamic fundamentalist.

I could do that. but I won't, because I recognize the inherent difference between an ideology and a religion .


All abstract sets of ideas or beliefs that spread over demographic or geographic area, are in part a reaction to changes in the environment. that is what makes them successfully compete with the previous sets of ideas and beliefs. they all serve similar functions of creating order and mode for collective action. My problem is that all of your posts in this thread target one ideology as though 'statism' is special. communism is special and liberalism is special.

 

You're not convincing me. You're just making nonsensical correlations between two extremely different things. The four points you raise are loosely contrived comparisons of two vastly different things. I mean, it's like you're saying oranges are actually basketballs because of their color.

No 1 is dead. The USSR went out of existence in the 1990s. What the USSR has to do with Western politics - liberal politics as you discuss - is beyond me. The USSR is dead. Irrelevant.

No 2 is politics. All politicians do this. All different parties and ideologies. Always have.

No 3 is odd. What on earth does evolution have to do with politics or church? Yeah, parties and churches have fought science forever, and they always lose. Evolution is science. Politics is politics. And religion is religion. Three very different things whose only interaction has been caused by the Church, and subsequently the church parties. The Church lost. In court even. Several times.

No 4 has been going on since the dawn of civilization. Do you know when the first recorded workers' strike occurred? 1170 BC.

I'm not even sure what your point is to the thread, but your arguments aren't convincing. You need a church for a religion. You need a Bible. Without these things, it's not religion, regardless of how much you want to connect the dots.

 

Supernatural deity Belch. Hero, leader and celebrity worship are nothing new. They're not seen as gods.