Ask A Genius 458 – The Future of Cultures (11)
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen and Rick Rosner
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2018/11/29
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen: If someone feels warm to their Jewish ancestry, they educate their families, get together with their families, have some meals, and feel a connection to their ancestors and those who are alive and present.
Some want to trash on that. But they seemed to have made a category error. It is painting religion with the same brush.
Rosner: People who critique religion come in different flavors. Some are thoughtful; others are looking to be an asshole.
Jacobsen: If the religion endorses or the sect of leader has a leader in its history that endorses, and the community affirms, the misogynistic aspects of it, those seem clearly bad to me.
Those deserve open critique and widespread condemnation. Other ones that simply speak to vague notions of doing good to other people, including the Freemasons: brotherly love, relief, and truth. Are those bad?
Even though, those are vague. Does that make Freemasonry bad, religion bad, or mysticism as a whole bad? I think this notion reaches its apex and collapses in the modern period.
Rosner: This has been a place for open assholery. Aggressive atheism is a breeding ground or attractor for assholes. I guess you could almost consider this fundamentalist atheism. There is a certain combative jerk who embraces atheism as a cudgel to get into vicious troll wars with people.
The same way that MAGA people often in combination with coming out of an evangelical tradition could get into vicious troll wars. It’s a function, partly, of social media giving everyone a hammer to go after everybody else.
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