What I find most baffling about Woodford and his ilk is that they can even pretend at this point that “the end of Christianity” would be something worth celebrating. Like, even from a secular liberal perspective, what do they seriously think would be gained? In the early 2000s you could almost imagine, from a narrowly American perspective, that the end of religion might bring about the end of various bigoted conservative beliefs.
But in the 2020s, especially in a country as secular as Britain, how could you sincerely make this case? Doesn’t he in some way already basically have what he supposedly wants? Is Britain notably better off now that for the first time in a thousand five hundred years Christians are in the minority? Can anyone honestly look at the state of post-secular, post-social media society and call this “enlightenment”? This is why most of the New Atheist crowd has either moved on from religion or wisened up about it. Woodford still hasn’t and it’s just kind of pathetic at this point.
The whole New Atheist shtick that shivving religion would bring about a new age of reason, rationale and human flourishing was always amusingly (though not *that* amusing) bereft of any reason to value reason, rationale and human flourishing absent a universal grounding from which those things flow.
Dread it, run from it, but God is always waiting in the end.
So far I’ve avoided the use of AI save for a number of queries I can count on three-fifths of a hand. DBH put out a bit last night around its lack of “transcendental orientation” and “need” to fill in the gaps by “feigning” knowledge. Despite the fact that I can as easily get sucked in as the next person when browsing the internet, it’s surprising that we haven’t collectively learned to push back against the pattern of “new technology, must adopt” without first considering what it is we’re dealing with; after getting even a cursory understanding of a distinction between mind and machine, it’s really not that hard to not let strings of ever more coherent sentences spit out rapidly fool me into thinking I have a coequal (or maybe for some, superior) on the other side of the screen. It’s mildly amusing to watch those who think it has an intrinsic compass of some sort.
I like how you point out "secularization" (growing decline in trust in organized religion) as just one part of the general trend of distrust in all institutions. A noted scholar claimed that we are at levels of distrust in institutions not seen since the Revolutions of 1848.
What I find most baffling about Woodford and his ilk is that they can even pretend at this point that “the end of Christianity” would be something worth celebrating. Like, even from a secular liberal perspective, what do they seriously think would be gained? In the early 2000s you could almost imagine, from a narrowly American perspective, that the end of religion might bring about the end of various bigoted conservative beliefs.
But in the 2020s, especially in a country as secular as Britain, how could you sincerely make this case? Doesn’t he in some way already basically have what he supposedly wants? Is Britain notably better off now that for the first time in a thousand five hundred years Christians are in the minority? Can anyone honestly look at the state of post-secular, post-social media society and call this “enlightenment”? This is why most of the New Atheist crowd has either moved on from religion or wisened up about it. Woodford still hasn’t and it’s just kind of pathetic at this point.
The whole New Atheist shtick that shivving religion would bring about a new age of reason, rationale and human flourishing was always amusingly (though not *that* amusing) bereft of any reason to value reason, rationale and human flourishing absent a universal grounding from which those things flow.
Dread it, run from it, but God is always waiting in the end.
So far I’ve avoided the use of AI save for a number of queries I can count on three-fifths of a hand. DBH put out a bit last night around its lack of “transcendental orientation” and “need” to fill in the gaps by “feigning” knowledge. Despite the fact that I can as easily get sucked in as the next person when browsing the internet, it’s surprising that we haven’t collectively learned to push back against the pattern of “new technology, must adopt” without first considering what it is we’re dealing with; after getting even a cursory understanding of a distinction between mind and machine, it’s really not that hard to not let strings of ever more coherent sentences spit out rapidly fool me into thinking I have a coequal (or maybe for some, superior) on the other side of the screen. It’s mildly amusing to watch those who think it has an intrinsic compass of some sort.
I like how you point out "secularization" (growing decline in trust in organized religion) as just one part of the general trend of distrust in all institutions. A noted scholar claimed that we are at levels of distrust in institutions not seen since the Revolutions of 1848.
Do you have a link to the video?
Yes, sorry I should have included it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNVp5afGT78