Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Geographical Strongholds Of Belief

One of the more asinine arguments against religions in general or specific religions like Christianity is the claim that geography dictates which religion someone will adhere to.  Not only is this a blatant non sequitur, as someone born into an explicitly religious community does not have to embrace any religion at all and someone born in a nonreligious or even non-theistic community could align with a religion, but it is also an attempt to dismiss an issue as extensive as religious theology by simply ignoring the actual content of the ideology, its consistency and the evidence for it.  It is also a stance that could be fallaciously used to sidestep literally any idea about anything, not that its sincere proponents are ever intelligent enough to be consistent or look to reason instead of happenstance social and geographical circumstances.

It is always possible for a given person to just happen to be born into a family or culture where they are directly exposed to and encouraged to latch onto true ideas about logic, theology, morality, science, and general metaphysics and epistemology--it would just have to be the case that they were born into a wholly rationalistic community and still naturally reasoned out truths or confirmed truths they had heard on their own.  Of course, there has not been a single culture that has been rationalistic as a whole which appears anywhere in the historical record.  Modern American culture is deeply immersed in an epistemologically invalid obsession with science, but true rationalism has never enjoyed widespread acceptance despite its universal accessibility.

What people who like to pretend that being born into a region with a popular religion somehow proves that the religion in question is false (these factors are completely unrelated to each other, as any person who decides not to be a pathetic excuse for a thinker can easily see) are too stupid to understand is that the social embrace of scientific ideas is often inherently linked to geographic location and time in history.  Since the kind of person who normally opposes theism, which is not even a religion by default despite the laziness of popular thought, is fixated on their subjective wonderment with science to the point that they are too irrational to even distinguish between logic and science, they will almost certainly overlook this.

Would the specifics of contemporary scientific consensus be altered by geography and time?  Absolutely, as any willing thinker can easily understand!  Moreover, atomic theory--just like every other scientific concept that does not pertain to immediately perceivable sensory experiences anyone can have without a telescope, microscope, or other such tool--is not even something a rationalistic person would ever come to on their own due to its philosophical unverifiability and irrelevance to matters of genuine importance like absolute certainty or morality.  Atomic theory and the supposed details of quantum physics are not like logical axioms and what follows from them or facts about the metaphysics of consciousness in that they are neither provable nor available to everyone.

Geographical strongholds of beliefs plainly dictate to what extent scientific concepts become a part of mainstream culture.  Does this have anything to do with whether or not these scientific concepts are false?  Is this an excuse to assume any kind of idea is incorrect?  Does this mean no one can autonomously, objectively analyze the common beliefs of their nation's citizens?  Only a fool would conclude anything other than an outright "no" to each of these questions.  Acting like geographical variances in culture is any sort of epistemological refutation of ideologies in general or religions in particular is something that betrays a very thorough misalignment with reason. 

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

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