Droves of millennial women leaving Republican Party: poll

[Leadeye]

Feedback we get from my son's on millennial women makes my wife despair that she will ever see grandchildren, it's disturbing. I've got to believe that there are decent women out there that aren't up to their eyeballs in credit card debt and chasing every latest fashion trend set by big media. The stories they tell me that they don't tell their mother are even scarier.

 

[Crittersdad]

I do not have any confidence in polls from The Blaze as Beck has an anti Trump Bias

 

[PaulF]

Actually this is not correct. The research seems to clearly point to religion being a part of our evollutionary wiring. Wiring can be overcome, of course, so, increasingly people are. So its fair to say that people are choosing to short-circuit their default wiring. But it's a false claim to say that godlessness is humanity's natural default state. It's not. It's that many people--not even close to a majority--have discovered a perception of reality beyond their natural inclinations towards some religious experience. 70% of people in the US say they are religious. But they are abandoning organized religion.

Erm, I think we may need to define our terms here. Religion is always external. Without outside influence there would be no Christians, Muslims, or Buddhists...these dogmas require access to revealed truth...someone else's truth.

I would agree with your point, in large part, if your replace "religion" with "spirituality". A person can explore their own spirituality with no religious artifice. The two are not the same thing.

 

[PaulF]

So something that comes to mind that seems appropriate to discuss is the rabid sort of fury the most ardent atheists have against religion. I think that's a psychological phenomenon. It's not rational to have contemptuous venom for religious people. That comes from somewhere other than reason. I think that contempt for religion drives a lot of bias towards pejorative explanations for religion, more than the facts do.

These are two different conversations, both worth having. Contempt for religion is (in my estimation) perfectly understandable in broad strokes. At its very core all religion offers the same thing: I am the gatekeeper to your spiritual awakening, do as I command. The entire idea is offensive in its arrogance. As far as contempt for the religious, I agree with you. It isn't rational or reasonable, and is fully counterproductive. Even though you find that same attitude from some sections of the religious community, it certainly seems more pervasive from the non-believing community.

Religion, depending on the tenants, by itself is benign. Religion mixed with more aggressive human traits has proven to be a toxic combination. Plenty of tyrant religious societies for that observation. It's only a shallow dig that finds eliminating religion is the answer. It's equally true that any ideology mixed with aggressive human traits is a toxic combination, even a godless one. Maybe if we stamp out all religions AND ideologies, we can survive the human tendency for tyrannical leaders.

I agree, but man...that's a pretty big carve-out you've given yourself there. "depending on the tenants"...well, yeah.

Or. Maybe humans are better off being free to believe what they want within a circle of sane boundaries. It's not my place to tell religious people that they're wrong for believing in religion. Especially if not 100% of what they believe is wrong. I think I can agree with Jordan Peterson about that much, that to the extent that religion can motivate people to do benevolent things, that's true enough. Maybe they can do those things without religion. But who am I to say they should? The only thing that I should have to say about how religion people conduct themselves is please don't impose your religious beliefs on me. You don't get to burn me at the stake, or behead me if I don't believe what you believe. You get to believe what you want. I get to believe what I want. We don't get to force our believes on each other.

I agree completely.

 

[Route 45]

Feedback we get from my son's on millennial women makes my wife despair that she will ever see grandchildren, it's disturbing. I've got to believe that there are decent women out there that aren't up to their eyeballs in credit card debt and chasing every latest fashion trend set by big media. The stories they tell me that they don't tell their mother are even scarier.

There’s nothing scary about credit cards and fashion. I wanna hear the good stuff.

 

[Leadeye]

There’s nothing scary about credit cards and fashion. I wanna hear the good stuff.

I don't need the Mouse whopping me with that hammer he carries for posting non-forum approved stuff, so use your imagination.

I think it was comment that all young women were whores that made me cringe a little. Both of them have seen marriages of their friends break up over issues like Trigger Time and Vigilant were referencing.

 

[jamil]

Erm, I think we may need to define our terms here. Religion is always external. Without outside influence there would be no Christians, Muslims, or Buddhists...these dogmas require access to revealed truth...someone else's truth.

I would agree with your point, in large part, if your replace "religion" with "spirituality". A person can explore their own spirituality with no religious artifice. The two are not the same thing.

No. “Religion” can be personal or institutional. It’s the set of beliefs about spirituality. You’re focusing on the institutional part of the definition. I hear people say they’re spiritual but not religious. I think they’re just searching for a way to say they have spritual beliefs, but they don’t like institutional religion. They’ve lopping off half the definition so they can make the distinction.

 

[PaulF]

No. “Religion” can be personal or institutional. It’s the set of beliefs about spirituality. You’re focusing on the institutional part of the definition. I hear people say they’re spiritual but not religious. I think they’re just searching for a way to say they have spritual beliefs, but they don’t like institutional religion. They’ve lopping off half the definition so they can make the distinction.

Well, okay. This helps explain why we are in conflict here.

I do make the distinction between religion and spirituality. I think its important, and it helps to inform my position when I talk about "religion". In most cases (at least that I am aware of) religion presupposes spirituality. It requires it as a foundation. I think of it like this: Spirituality is the openness to or outright belief in the existence of a spiritual (unseen, etherial, intangible) aspect of human beings and the larger world we inhabit. Spirituality is an empty stage...religion is the actors, audience, and crew required to give purpose to the space.

"Religion" has a necessarily social aspect inherent to the idea that is lacking from the idea of "Spirituality". One can experience spirituality in a social vacuum, one cannot experience religion in this way...unless God is real, of course.

You know where I stand on that, though. Look, I know where you are coming from...I accept your perspective, however I respectfully disagree with your definition of "religion", as it accounts poorly for the nuance of the experience.

 

[jamil]

Paul, the words “personal or institutional” I got from a dictionary that I consulted to see if you’re right. There is a distinction between religious and spiritual. I’m not using them interchangeably. But people do colloquially.

Spiritual is of or concerning or in with the metaphysical. I would say being religious is having a set of spiritual beliefs. And of course that can be personal or institutional. So I guess I’d say spirituality is experimental, and religion is the beliefs relating to what’s experienced. So literally speaking, the people who say they are spiritual but not religious are implying that they experience the metaphisical state of being, but they have no beliefs about it. I don’t think that’s what they really mean to say.

 

[jamil]

These are two different conversations, both worth having. Contempt for religion is (in my estimation) perfectly understandable in broad strokes. At its very core all religion offers the same thing: I am the gatekeeper to your spiritual awakening, do as I command. The entire idea is offensive in its arrogance. As far as contempt for the religious, I agree with you. It isn't rational or reasonable, and is fully counterproductive. Even though you find that same attitude from some sections of the religious community, it certainly seems more pervasive from the non-believing community.

I think this illustrates my point. You could have the point of view that says religion is "I am the gatekeeper to your spiritual awakening." Would you say the same thing about a philosopher and his believers? You could have a group of believers in the ideas of John Locke. Or, you could have a group of believers in the ideas of Carl Marx. And then you can build whole societies based on those ideas. And you can imagine how differently those societies evolve.

Back to religion, you can have the point of view that says religion is "I am the gatekeeper to your spiritual awakening". Or, you could have the point of view that people join around common spiritual beliefs, maybe initiated by a person, and that the common belief that evolves is a belief about a way to spiritual awakening.

Either religion or philosophy can evolve into a sort of "I am the gatekeeper". My experience with religion is that it's the people in the religion exercising the subroutines of evolved nature that tend to put themselves in the positions of gatekeeper. Like the elderly stodgy stiffs sitting in the back pews constantly looking for people to look down their noses at.

Belief has always been abused to the benefit of tyrants regardless of the nature. The largest scale exploitation of belief in history happened at the hands of atheists. No one had to believe in supernatural powers to be convinced that the "bourgeoisie" deserved to be pitchforked.

I agree, but man...that's a pretty big carve-out you've given yourself there. "depending on the tenants"...well, yeah.

I didn't mean that to sound as axiomatic as you took it. I was thinking about the Christianity laid out in the new testament. Christianity transformed the barbaric religion in the old testament by saying Jesus fulfilled all that. All of that is over. This is the new way, and the new way is pacifist. It draws a stark distinction between church and state. It's an individualist religion. It's tenants are applied personally. Of course it's also supposed to be spread to convince other individuals to adopt its tenants into their own being. The idea of "church" originally was for the support of individual development. Lifting each other up. Of course it morphed into much more than that.

Other religions are similar, which focus more on individual spiritual development. But contrast that with a religion like Islam. There is no replacement for its early barbarism like there is with Christianity.

 

[BugI02]

If California or Massachusetts wants to turn themselves into gunless socialist utopias I really have no problem with that, and I don't think the federal government should be allowed to (or strong enough, honestly) to stop them...as long as the people of those states alone are on the hook to pay for it and are free to leave if they don't like the results. America has the potential to be a great marketplace of social, political, and economic ideas...except for the shadow of the federal government. I don't understand why so many people these days seem to think everyone else should have to live like they do. I have no problem letting others live how they choose, but I demand the same freedom.

I think America was designed with this freedom in mind, at least to some degree.

The government should be godless. The people? That's each person's individual choice to make. Blame for the "slide into godlessness" doesn't belong to the government, it belongs to religion itself. More and more people are starting to realize that godlessness is humanity's natural default state, and religion is having an increasingly difficult time convincing them otherwise.

That is an ... interesting ... formulation. Forgive me if I am in error, but months ago when the subject was sanctuary citys and states, and I was arguing that Federal funds should be withheld from such jurisdictions (because while they have the right to attempt to follow that misguided path I should not have to pay for it) I believe you were one of those arguing the other side of the point. Is the argument situational?

 

[BugI02]

If it is a coping mechanism, it seems to be a hard-wired one, because it seems to be the default one invoked across both time and culture. I don't see the study explaining the religious experience people have. I think the consensus among evolutionary biologists seems to favor the hard-wiring, still.

So something that comes to mind that seems appropriate to discuss is the rabid sort of fury the most ardent atheists have against religion. I think that's a psychological phenomenon. It's not rational to have contemptuous venom for religious people. That comes from somewhere other than reason. I think that contempt for religion drives a lot of bias towards pejorative explanations for religion, more than the facts do.

Religion, depending on the tenants, by itself is benign. Religion mixed with more aggressive human traits has proven to be a toxic combination. Plenty of tyrant religious societies for that observation. It's only a shallow dig that finds eliminating religion is the answer. It's equally true that any ideology mixed with aggressive human traits is a toxic combination, even a godless one. Maybe if we stamp out all religions AND ideologies, we can survive the human tendency for tyrannical leaders.

Or. Maybe humans are better off being free to believe what they want within a circle of sane boundaries. It's not my place to tell religious people that they're wrong for believing in religion. Especially if not 100% of what they believe is wrong. I think I can agree with Jordan Peterson about that much, that to the extent that religion can motivate people to do benevolent things, that's true enough. Maybe they can do those things without religion. But who am I to say they should? The only thing that I should have to say about how religion people conduct themselves is please don't impose your religious beliefs on me. You don't get to burn me at the stake, or behead me if I don't believe what you believe. You get to believe what you want. I get to believe what I want. We don't get to force our believes on each other.

"And that day dawned when Arrakis lay at the hub of the universe with the wheel poised to spin.

Indeed

 

[jamil]

That is an ... interesting ... formulation. Forgive me if I am in error, but months ago when the subject was sanctuary citys and states, and I was arguing that Federal funds should be withheld from such jurisdictions (because while they have the right to attempt to follow that misguided path I should not have to pay for it) I believe you were one of those arguing the other side of the point. Is the argument situational?

I haven’t spent much time thinking about that, but just how it hits me, the only logical situational aspect the the argument, if that is actually the argument, would be what money is being withheld. If the withheld funding is completely unrelated to immigration then that’s purely punative. And if it is a punative argument, that’s a completely different argument from not bailing out people who engage in foolishness. Your foolishness is not my responsibility to pay for.

 

[PaulF]

That is an ... interesting ... formulation. Forgive me if I am in error, but months ago when the subject was sanctuary citys and states, and I was arguing that Federal funds should be withheld from such jurisdictions (because while they have the right to attempt to follow that misguided path I should not have to pay for it) I believe you were one of those arguing the other side of the point. Is the argument situational?

I don’t recall ever coming down on the side of federal funding for sanctuary cities/states. I have argued for open borders...to a point. Maybe those conversations are similar enough to create some confusion?

It could also be that I haven’t clearly and distinctly communicated my position.

I believe the best government is goverment that the citizens can see and influence themselves. I have a thorough mistrust of most large institutions, government especially. The federal government (and its money) is best kept to a minimum, statutory position. It has its uses, but they are few...and wrought with potential for abuse.

People should be free to live as they choose, not people on the other side of the country. But, those people should be aware of the consequences and liable for the costs of their chosen lifestyle.

So, while I am quite a bit more “liberal” in my views on immigration, that doesn’t extend to making other people pay to fund anyone else’s big government project. California can have sanctuary cities, socialized medicine, and a cradle-to-grave welfare state if they want...so long as they pay for it, and people can leave if they don’t like the regime. I’m fine with that, the world is a big place.

...all I ask in return is the right to live the way I choose, too.

 

[BugI02]

Erm, I think we may need to define our terms here. Religion is always external. Without outside influence there would be no Christians, Muslims, or Buddhists...these dogmas require access to revealed truth...someone else's truth.

I would agree with your point, in large part, if your replace "religion" with "spirituality". A person can explore their own spirituality with no religious artifice. The two are not the same thing.

I think I must disagree. You focus primarily on the large "religious" bodies/organizations extant today (Christian, Muslim, Buddhist) but ignore or gloss over the fact that even the willingness of a village or tribe to accept guidance from a shaman is likely related to the inbuilt tendency toward human mysticism. The guidance is often external, but I would argue that the willingness to accept it as potential guidance is abetted by the pre-existing tendency of humans to accept a mystical interpretation for events otherwise beyond their understanding

The tendency through the ages has been to personify wild natural forces as powerful and capricious "gods", of more or less basic human archetype, that must be propitiated and appeased

 

[BugI02]

No. “Religion” can be personal or institutional. It’s the set of beliefs about spirituality. You’re focusing on the institutional part of the definition. I hear people say they’re spiritual but not religious. I think they’re just searching for a way to say they have spritual beliefs, but they don’t like institutional religion. They’ve lopping off half the definition so they can make the distinction.

Would that not make them agnostic? Personally I have always defined those to be people who believe in (a) god or source of spiritual guidance but do not believe in "religion" - the formalized and organized practice of such beliefs

 

[BugI02]

I don’t recall ever coming down on the side of federal funding for sanctuary cities/states. I have argued for open borders...to a point. Maybe those conversations are similar enough to create some confusion?

It could also be that I haven’t clearly and distinctly communicated my position.

I believe the best government is goverment that the citizens can see and influence themselves. I have a thorough mistrust of most large institutions, government especially. The federal government (and its money) is best kept to a minimum, statutory position. It has its uses, but they are few...and wrought with potential for abuse.

People should be free to live as they choose, not people on the other side of the country. But, those people should be aware of the consequences and liable for the costs of their chosen lifestyle.

So, while I am quite a bit more “liberal” in my views on immigration, that doesn’t extend to making other people pay to fund anyone else’s big government project. California can have sanctuary cities, socialized medicine, and a cradle-to-grave welfare state if they want...so long as they pay for it, and people can leave if they don’t like the regime. I’m fine with that, the world is a big place.

...all I ask in return is the right to live the way I choose, too.

[Virtual Teal] Because of the limitations of memory and the site search engine, I included the potential mea culpa. There was in fact a great deal of the discussion centered around fungibility and the difficulty of acheiving the narrowly defined purpose of the defunding. If I have undeservedly accused you please accept my apology.

That said, I am quite in agreement with the vision of the founding fathers of states as laboratories of democracy able to be experimental - at their own expense. One of the facts that pulled me into the original discussion was facts that came out of the Orville dam near disaster. It turned out that in the preceding decade the state of California, which was responsible for the dam, spent zero dollars on maintenance while during the same period having spent something like $25 billion on benefits for illegals and thus I supported no federal aid for expenses such asOrrville that they should have taken care of before the needs of illegals. I was of the position that they should either have to reprioritize existing funding or increase taxation to fund such problems rather than receive federal aid due to the problem being caused by their own negligence.

I must leave eave the discussion there temporarily. I would need to switch to a mobile device (in fact I already have) which for me is just an exercise in frustration. But I did wish to proffer the needed apology before signing off [end Virtual Teal]

 

[jamil]

I think I must disagree. You focus primarily on the large "religious" bodies/organizations extant today (Christian, Muslim, Buddhist) but ignore or gloss over the fact that even the willingness of a village or tribe to accept guidance from a shaman is likely related to the inbuilt tendency toward human mysticism. The guidance is often external, but I would argue that the willingness to accept it as potential guidance is abetted by the pre-existing tendency of humans to accept a mystical interpretation for events otherwise beyond their understanding

The tendency through the ages has been to personify wild natural forces as powerful and capricious "gods", of more or less basic human archetype, that must be propitiated and appeased

If I understand what you're saying, I think we're sort of making the same point about tendency for humans to be religious. Reading some of the evolutionary biology literature, there seems to be support for the idea that subconsiousness is kinda like firmware where there are subroutines which run under various circumstances. For example the subroutines that Hitler ran are ancient, and under the very same conditions which manifested him could be manifested in any of us, more or less. And, more or less, it's likely similar with religious subroutines where some input triggers the subroutines.

So if any of that is true, it seems obvious that experience can obviously override these subroutines, because people have adapted to override the default behavior. That seems obviously biological to some extent too, because just as you can breed behavior in and out of dogs, some behavioral traits are passed on in human reproduction.

Anyway, as far as what consciousness is, it's pretty well accepted that there's a consciousness that runs atop a subconscious sort of firmware. But, those are mostly theories. No one has really definitively answered the question about what is human consciousness. So maybe it's that. Or, maybe it's some metaphysical soul breathed into us by one of the many gods people have believed in throughout the lineages of human existence. I just see more evidence of the former than the latter if we're reducing the domain of discourse to empirical things. Either way honest people can't ignore the fact that we seem to be rewired for some kind of religious belief, which of course, can be overridden.

 

[jamil]

Would that not make them agnostic? Personally I have always defined those to be people who believe in (a) god or source of spiritual guidance but do not believe in "religion" - the formalized and organized practice of such beliefs

Huh? Agnosticism is the viewpoint that the existence of god or some metaphysical realm is unknowable. The people who say they're spiritual but not religious aren't necessarily saying that they think god is unknowable. I mean some could be saying that. I think you could feel like you've had some kind of religious experience and think there may be something beyond the physical world, but don't believe that world is knowable. But here, there's really not enough belief wrapped up into that to make it a practical belief. So that would make them agnostic, but it certainly would not make them religious.

But I don't think that's what people who say they're spiritual but not religious are saying. Because they have beliefs wrapped around their spiritual experience, which, actually makes them"religious", by definition. They just don't like institutional religion.

As an example, I have a niece who says she's not religious. She's spiritual. It's pretty new-age spiritualism. She believes the earth and everything living is all interconnected through a spirit realm which most people can't see, but she can see it. She can feel it. She says it's very real to her. When she told me about it I wondered if her religious experience was watching Avatar under the influence of psychotropic drugs. I don't mean to belittle her beliefs though. I know some people report experiencing those kinds of religious experiences. I mean, hell. Maybe she's right. But I'm certainly not going to adopt that belief without some tangible evidence that it's true.

So anyway, her spiritual knowledge of this other realm informs her beliefs and her behavior towards the earth and people. She's not agnostic at all--she "knows" it. That's actually a religious belief, but she doesn't like the word "religion" because she thinks religion is only institutional. And hers is very individual and personal to her. Ironically, I think if she ran into enough people who've had similar experiences, it's reasonable to imagine that her and others common religious belief could evolve into an institutional religion.

 

[indiucky]

I love Jesus..He loves me...The one on the cross..Not the waiter at Iguana's Mexican grill....

Jamil you got a package here...

Very nice...I have been dry firing it like a mad man and went ahead and scratched your initials into it for you...Two hours on the hood of the truck (don't worry..I'm keeping an eye on it) and it's hardly showing any sign of rust...Should buff right out with a dremmel tool....