Does appeal to historical progress, function as the secular equivalent to "Deus Vult" and "divine ordination"? It seems to have largely filled that vacuum.
>>1237533
Long story short: yes. Empiricism also plays a role, in the sense that science (including social science) is given quasi-religious authority in public debates despite none of the participants really understanding the research and data.
>>1237533
>Hillary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u52Oz-54VYw
>>1237547
So the point is that we're supposed to be laughing at the stupidity of the article, right? You don't actually think like that?
>>1237533
Historical progress is literally a meme so yes - this is exactly the same shit as divine will/ordination.
This was obvious even in Stirner's day
> The fear of God in the proper sense was shaken long ago, and a more or less conscious “atheism,” externally recognizable by a wide-spread “unchurchliness,” has involuntarily become the mode. But what was taken from God has been superadded to Man, and the power of humanity grew greater in just the degree that of piety lost weight: “Man” is the God of today, and fear of Man has taken the place of the old fear of God.
>But, because Man represents only another Supreme Being, nothing in fact has taken place but a metamorphosis in the Supreme Being, and the fear of Man is merely an altered form of the fear of God.
>Our atheists are pious people.
>>1237542
>science (including social science) is given quasi-religious authority in public debates despite none of the participants really understanding the research and data.
Hah yeah i was thinking about this also. The aerage person knows that science achieves great things, because he's seen them himself (iphones and tv's and cars and satellites). But that average person doesn't know the specifics of the science behind it. So in media you will often see stuff such as "A recent study has shown..." or "Scientists say that..." . And i guess people will just accept that, like they have faith in science because they have seen the miracles it produces.
>>1237583
This post was spooky.
>>1237587
This is pretty much how people thought about God in the past, except instead of looking at technology, they looked at creation itself
>>1237594
Science is a much mightier deity than God, in all actuality. He (science) sure performs a lot of more miracles at least. And gives a lot more power to humanity.
Also this is a thing that triggers me: Progressivism. When a person says that their policies are "progressive". It's circular reasoning. They reason in the following way: Because these policies are going to be implemented in the future, we should implement them. By implementing policies that will be implemented in the future, we are being progressive. Because to progress is to do the things that will be done.
When i think about this kind of argument i geta brain meltdown. And yeah it kind of sounds like "God wills it". We will do X because in the future, X will be. So we are being "progressive".
>>1237595
If you consider God as creating and sustaining reality itself, not really. We just ceased to see reality as a manifestation of the will of some agency, which is why science, which greatly (although relatively, not so much) reality, becomes the next best option.
>>1237609
greatly *dominates reality
Or "nature" might be a better word
>>1237542
>Empiricism
what you call empiricism is empiricism done by rationalists, aka people who love to speculate, know more or less that their speculations are sterile, are always disappointing, more so once they compare them to their fantasy of the ''empirical world'' through their other fantasy of ''empirical proof'' and ''thought experiment'', but still choose to cling to their speculations in claiming that they are not able to stop speculating, therefore that ''not speculating is impossible, it is mandatory to speculate'' (plus we are paid for this now) so let's continue.
What they say is that their rationalism remains bounded by their hedonism, even though they love to claim otherwise, and yet always fail to justify that their speculation goes beyond hedonism...
>>1237533
I was thinking about this yesterday. The spread of liberal western ideas has replaced the wide eyed enthusiasm of missionary work of centuries ago. Both are undertaken to change "primitive" people and both are done with absolute certainty of moral superiority.
>>1237533
pretty much yes, but its hard to avoid such thinking, it is a level of rational functionalism that cannot be ignored when making any public or political decision or setting up any 'way of thinking' around things like economic, social or cultural development, the only way to justify things in rationalist logic is obviously to imply some teleological logic of eventual benficial outcome, some form of progression from the current state seen as inferior to a future one designated as better
i mean can you imagine a politician or corporate head comming out publicly with some plan or proposal ending up with saying- ''look we endorce this an see it as necesary but realy itl fuck shit up for a mass of people and generations ill have to work their ass of to fix that whole clusterfuck we are just about to cause'' - that dosen realy sound like good rethoric
only in a few examples that could work, like when churchil gave that speech about sweat, blood and tears, but notice there he was sincere, because the situation was such, but the declared paradigms by which society and politics and so on, are generaly supposed to function by, as in when its 'buisness as usual', are by necesity not sincere
>>1237700
It's not just policy, it's stuff like a woman being president. She is ordained by the current year.
>>1237790
now you lost me... you mean hilary becoming president of usa? you mean like the rethoric is that its progressive to vote for a female president?
well, people do that all over the world, vote for female politicians i mean, for decades now, even in much less ''democratic'' societies
but any way whats that got to do with anything?
thats exactly what i was saying, any given thing if endorsed is endorsed for being good or progressive, no one is going to support something by calling it regressive, thats the whole point, i doubt even in some feudal fiefdom back a thousand years ago the guy in charge ever seriously came up to his subjects and sayd - look were gonna do this thing and it will set you all back 20 years but fuck it we just have to get this done or heads are gonna roll
the banking sector bailout was one such example, it was just done, no one mentioned progress or legitimacy, the people in charge just said - cut the crap, do this now or youll get proper fucked, figure your way out of shit later - and it got done, and everyone just dealt with it and returned to good old 'progress' logic
>>1237816
We have to distinguish between "bettering" and "progressing". You can get progressively worse. Certainly something being "better" can be associated with the past as well (Make America Great--AGAIN). I'm saying using the current year to ordain her candidacy in itself has nothing to do with making anything better, it is literally nothing more than progress's ordaining her, progress has spoken--not "better" has spoken, but "progress" has spoken, almost completely abstracted from "better" and made in a transcendent god that isn't simply better, but infinitely good.
>>1237826
well the progressive stance obviously defines progress as better, as progressing from a inferior state of things to a superior one, based on some set of definitions or ideological points, and this is what is generaly meat by the word -progress-
in as much it is as much a ''transcendental god'' as any guiding principle or system of values or divine laws or any variant of ''greater good'' you wanna pull out of the anals of history
i mean youre talking tautologies, obviously its all just notions, obviously ''progress'' can and does fuck things up
this way you can apply deconstructionist critique to anything, its like a thought machine, you turn it on, point it at some discourse, pull a lever, and it renders it all into bits of nothing
its all just rethorics and demagogy, its a election campaign for fuck sake, off course its all bullshit
>>1237859
It's chronological-based progress, though, not just contextual progress. 2016 is see as more progressed than 2015, regardless of how much progressivist policies have carried the day.
>>1237871
well no one realy has a time machine so as to progress into 2014
all modern notions of progress are notions of chronological-based progress, usualy concieved of as linear
any rational human can see how unrealistic this is, and how stupid current year rethoric realy is, but thats how the notion of progress simply works, its implicitly chronological and assumed, optimaly, to be linear, continuous
people have been pointing out this is often factualy wrong for ages, still doesent change the fact progress is seen as a continuous process in linear time trough which things get better, and so logicaly the ''current year'' thing is implyed
