Is there a New Secular Quasi-Religion, If So Does It Support We Are Innately "Religious" or Ideologically Tribal?

[Free Ranger]

To be honest, at this point I am reminded of the Mormon apologist Robert Millet who instructing BYU Students in this way:

It was years later that I was reading Elder Packer’s book Teach Ye Diligently, where Elder Packer tells of an experience of traveling with President Henry D. Moyle of the First Presidency, and how repeatedly President Moyle was given these antagonistic and baiting difficult questions by news reporters and interviewers, and how that in every case President Moyle, and the church, just came out smelling like a rose. Brother Packer was just fascinated with this. And as they drove away once, Elder Packer said, “President, President, that was amazing.” “What?” “Wha, wha, what you just did. How do you, how do you do that. They ask you these hard, hard questions, how do you do that? I mean, you came out looking great.” President Moyle said, “Boyd, whenever a person asks me an antagonistic question, I never answer that question, but rather, I answer the question they should have asked.” …

… I just answered the question he should have asked. Now, what’s the question he should have asked?

How do I know that what you have to say is true? Or, what should I know to investigate your message properly? How shall we begin our study of Mormonism? That would have been the right question. You see? What I’m going to do is answer the question they should have asked.

Now, let me say it another way. The world may not know this, but the issue isn’t Adam-God. The issue isn’t Mountain Meadows Massacre. The issue isn’t plural marriage. The issue facing the religious world today is, was Joseph Smith called of God? And that’s the single most important issue to determine. And they’re only going find that out in one way: by learning a little bit, and praying a lot.
Source: https://capro.information/Mormon-scholar-rober ... -the-lord/

So what I see going on here in this thread some people are avoiding my questions and answering the question they wanted to answer which is "what is a religion," which in my humble opinion feels like a clever Mormon-like/Millet-style tactic in my view. For my actual question(s) was regarding whether or not there is a new cultish ideology many call secular far-Leftism (not to be confused with Liberalism) that is in my opinion going mostly ignored in the exmormon community (despite much of its harm, more harmful than Mormonism even perhaps?) and in some cases fully adopted by some exmormons despite its perceieved "cultishness" by Bill Maher and other secular atheists?

But I can see now that from the recent responses, with again a 4 on 1 at this point, overall unpleasant experience, kind of answers my question I think, or at least I should not have dared to ask the question in the first place. So I will say now that my question has been answered indirectly I think based on the responses.

So I do not feel a desire any longer to engage as my inquiry has resolved itself. Again, not a fan of sticking my finger in hornet's nests. And yes I do sense hostility. So I will leave ya be. Yet I will honestly read the links provided in the responses from you all and I will in good faith carefully think over the counter arguments in the links provided and carefully ponder [no praying though ] all points of view.

[Marcus]

...So what I see going on here in this thread some people are avoiding my questions and answering the question they wanted to answer which is "what is a religion," ...

That is incorrect. I asked some very specific questions, based exactly on your post.

Could you address those before we move on? I will repost:

What my opening post is getting at is that atheism opens an existential vacuum, it is the removal of a belief in God and with it objectively provable values of Right or Wrong and ultimate meaning in life (cue Nietzszche's Mad Man parable), and as a result people will fill that existential void with different things...

Could we just stop right here, so few things can be clarified?

1. How does a "belief in God" lead to "OBJECTIVELY provable values"?

(I capitalized "objectively" because it has a very specific meaning.)

2. Your statement that "removal of a belief in God" opens a "vacuum" again assumes as a starting condition your assumption about religion/belief in God being an innate property of humankind.

If it is not innate for all, then there is no "vacuum" upon "removal," so what is your reasoning for using these terms?

3. "and as a result people will fill that existential void with different things... "

See #2, same issue, same question.

(And just to clarify in advance, i am not feeling hostile, nor am i disturbed, offended or upset by your argument, nor is my post based on any aspect of exmormonism. I am simply responding to the ideas you are presenting, and i have some questions. I am interested in an academic discussion of these concepts.)

[Free Ranger]

We don't need to move on no.

As I said:

To be honest, at this point I am reminded of the Mormon apologist Robert Millet who instructing BYU Students in this way:

It was years later that I was reading Elder Packer’s book Teach Ye Diligently, where Elder Packer tells of an experience of traveling with President Henry D. Moyle of the First Presidency, and how repeatedly President Moyle was given these antagonistic and baiting difficult questions by news reporters and interviewers, and how that in every case President Moyle, and the church, just came out smelling like a rose. Brother Packer was just fascinated with this. And as they drove away once, Elder Packer said, “President, President, that was amazing.” “What?” “Wha, wha, what you just did. How do you, how do you do that. They ask you these hard, hard questions, how do you do that? I mean, you came out looking great.” President Moyle said, “Boyd, whenever a person asks me an antagonistic question, I never answer that question, but rather, I answer the question they should have asked.” …

… I just answered the question he should have asked. Now, what’s the question he should have asked?

How do I know that what you have to say is true? Or, what should I know to investigate your message properly? How shall we begin our study of Mormonism? That would have been the right question. You see? What I’m going to do is answer the question they should have asked.

Now, let me say it another way. The world may not know this, but the issue isn’t Adam-God. The issue isn’t Mountain Meadows Massacre. The issue isn’t plural marriage. The issue facing the religious world today is, was Joseph Smith called of God? And that’s the single most important issue to determine. And they’re only going find that out in one way: by learning a little bit, and praying a lot.
Source: https://capro.information/Mormon-scholar-rober ... -the-lord/

So what I see going on here in this thread some people are avoiding my questions and answering the question they wanted to answer which is "what is a religion," which in my humble opinion feels like a clever Mormon-like/Millet-style tactic in my view. For my actual question(s) was regarding whether or not there is a new cultish ideology many call secular far-Leftism (not to be confused with Liberalism) that is in my opinion going mostly ignored in the exmormon community (despite much of its harm, more harmful than Mormonism even perhaps?) and in some cases fully adopted by some exmormons despite its perceieved "cultishness" by Bill Maher and other secular atheists?

But I can see now that from the recent responses, with again a 4 on 1 at this point, overall unpleasant experience, kind of answers my question I think, or at least I should not have dared to ask the question in the first place. So I will say now that my question has been answered indirectly I think based on the responses.

So I do not feel a desire any longer to engage as my inquiry has resolved itself. Again, not a fan of sticking my finger in hornet's nests. And yes I do sense hostility. So I will leave ya be. Yet I will honestly read the links provided in the responses from you all and I will in good faith carefully think over the counter arguments in the links provided and carefully ponder [no praying though ] all points of view.

[Free Ranger]

Please respect my desire to disengage. Which is my right, and the celestial attitude would be to respect it.

[Marcus]

Please respect my desire to disengage. Which is my right, and the celestial attitude would be to respect it.

Ok, sure. You are certainly under no obligation to engage.

[Marcus]

I wanted to come back to Gad's point here, wherein he was summarizing one of the OP's arguments:

... until all philosophy problems are solved (induction, free will, self etc) and science can explain everything and in fact, all philosophy problems explained by science by reducing everything to matter, then we are operating by religion...

I agree with Gad here, we certainly don't know or understand everything, but saying that that means we must default to religion is crucially limiting the vast array of thoughts and dreams, considerations and ideas humankind (and any future evolving -kind!) can have.

Someone recently pointed out here that Sagan talked about the Universe as a wondrous, amazing thing, as though that implied a belief in religion.

I disagree. I find great wonder in the Universe, amazing beauty, and so many spectacular accomplishmemts of so many different types of living, growing things---all of which I find stunning, but not necessarily implying anything supernatural.

Here's a Sagan quote I think expresses unequivocally his position:

Today, we're still loaded down - and, to some extent, embarrassed by- ancient myths, but we respect them as part of the same impulse that has led to the modern, scientific kind of myth. But we now have the opportunity to discover, for the first time, the way the universe is in fact constructed as opposed to how we would wish it to be constructed.

Carl Sagan

That, more accurately than any version proposed in the OP, reflects the possibility of any general tendencies that may or may not be innate in a human brain.

[Res Ipsa]

I wanted to come back to Gad's point here, wherein he was sunmarizing one of the OP's arguments:

... until all philosophy problems are solved (induction, free will, self etc) and science can explain everything and in fact, all philosophy problems explained by science by reducing everything to matter, then we are operating by religion...

I agree with Gad here, we certainly don't know or understand everything, but saying that that means we must default to religion is crucially limiting the vast array of thoughts and dreams, considerations and ideas humankind (and any future evolving -kind!) can have.

Someone recently pointed out here that Sagan talked about the Universe as a wondrous, amazing thing, as though that implied a belief in religion.

I disagree. I find great wonder in the Universe, amazing beauty, and so many spectacular accomplishmemts of so many different types of living, growing things---all of which I find stunning, but not necessarily implying anything supernatural.

Here's a Sagan quote I think expresses unequivocally his position:

Today, we're still loaded down - and, to some extent, embarrassed by- ancient myths, but we respect them as part of the same impulse that has led to the modern, scientific kind of myth. But we now have the opportunity to discover, for the first time, the way the universe is in fact constructed as opposed to how we would wish it to be constructed.

Carl Sagan

Well said!

[Marcus]

We went for a hike over the weekend, and I took many spectacular pictures of very teeny tiny things. (It wasn't my photography that was spectacular, to be sure, it was the spectacular miracles i was recording!)

It was immensely satisfying, in the middle of a pretty mundane, grotesquely humid, fairly exhausting 2 1/2 hour hike. (With a slight dopamine kick in the middle when we thought we heard a bear. )

It reminded me of this, from the script Steve Martin wrote for the movie L.A. Story, wherein he shamelessly( ) cribbed from Shakespeare:

"So there I was jabbering at her about my new job as a serious newsman - about anything at all - but all I could think was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful and yet again, wonderful."

[Physics Guy]

I'm afraid I stand by my earlier call, that this thread was more about identifying questions than about answering them once they were clearly defined.

The step of defining a question is significant, because posing a question inevitably carries the implication that the question is worth posing, which means that there are at least two different possible answers with significant a priori chances of being right. So for example, just defining the question to be whether Joseph Smith was called of God, which might naïvely seem like a neutral step, is actually already saying that the chance of a Yes must be around 25% or so, minimum. It makes the Yes answer plausible, without even thinking about any evidence at all. And if you can then declare that the answer isn't easy to determine, which naïvely just sounds careful and rigorous, you boost that Yes chance right up to 50%, at flat zero cost in any actual thought.

For a heavyweight conclusion like a law of nature, or something, conceding that the chance of it being correct could be as low as just 50% is absurd. For a distinctly minority view like the prophethood of Joseph Smith, though, a free pass to 50% plausibility is a prize to be seized. So it's a gambit to try out, for sure. The question is whether Smith was called of God: getting the debate to start there is skipping to the head of an awfully long line.

To "beg a question" means to argue for a conclusion with an argument that implicitly assumes the conclusion, rather than demonstrating it, so that in effect one is simply begging the audience to accept the conclusion, rather than arguing for it. Raising a question, and calling for open debate on it, can be an effective way to beg the question half-way, in the sense of getting people to grant you 50% plausibility just for nothing. You don't beg for the actual belt, but you beg for a shot at the title, in a match with the champ, without paying your dues. You want to be a contender, for free.

Not every proposed debate is necessarily doing that, but it's a thing that can happen, so if you don't want to do that, you have to be aware of the issue and take seriously the step of getting buy-in to your proposed question. You can't just complain that people don't like your question, any more than you can complain that people just don't like your answer, because framing the question is usually getting half-way to the answer.

[Marcus]

...Raising a question, and calling for open debate on it, can be an effective way to beg the question half-way, in the sense of getting people to grant you 50% plausibility just for nothing. You don't beg for the actual belt, but you beg for a shot at the title, in a match with the champ, without paying your dues. You want to be a contender, for free...

You are correct, sir, since the very beginning...

...Once I realized that we are all engaging in some form of religion-making, including atheists in one way or another most of the time...

No, we are all not.