Comment by leononame
10 hours ago
> Nerds were often seen as poorly social since "logic and reasoning" would go against socially accepted norms. This where the fedora tipping meme comes from: "everybody understands that religion is not literal, but we have to all accept the lie for social cohesion". But "nerds" would be the ones willing to take the ridicule and ostracism because truth would be more important than conformity.
I don't think nerds are/were seen as poorly social because logic and reasoning go against social norms. I'll bite on the religion focus. If everyone understands religion is not literal, being smirk about taking it literally is not logical or reasoning or making anyone look smarter. It just makes you look like a dork. Subtext and not being meant to read literally are a core part of social interaction.
I see the same in school, when some overly literal students argue about the interpretation of a book they are assigned to read. "the author can't possible mean that" or "show me where it says that on the page" is a common lazy criticism with little value. Some people are just like that, and (warning: personal observation) nerds tend to be a bit more like that. But the arguments I hear from that corner against religion are seldom great, they are just some minor gotchas.
I don't want to get into the whole religion debate, and I'll admit that there are also groups of Christians that take the bible very literally, as I'm sure there are for other religions as well. From what I can see, these don't make up the canon of religion, and I kind of believe they're mostly concentrated in North America, but that might be my skewed perspective.
It's quite sad that social mechanics in our society don't work well for some people, but that doesn't mean they don't exist and it doesn't make everyone except nerds "illogical".
If "everyone understands religion is not literal", why do so many people take it literally? You could just as sensibly flip the argument and argue that the garden-variety 'nerdy' atheist is talking literally about atheism but really doing negative theology ("your idea of God is totally wrong and does not exist, because the true God is necessarily inaccessible to human reason") but that would be silly and make you look like a dork too.
As for the why, I don't have an answer, but I thought I addressed it with this:
> I'll admit that there are also groups of Christians that take the bible very literally, as I'm sure there are for other religions as well. From what I can see, these don't make up the canon of religion, and I kind of believe they're mostly concentrated in North America, but that might be my skewed perspective.
There will always be people falling off on one side of the spectrum or the other. Personally, I haven't met anyone who takes the bible literally, and I know a _lot_ of Christians, including pastors and priests. Some people simply just believe that there is something more, others have a feeling that you can sense that, some just need this believe to feel safe, etc. I guess it depends on where you're from, I believe biblicism is more common in North America, or at least more visible.
Additionally, the "everyone understands religion is not literal" was citing my parent. Usually, "everyone" is kind of understood not to mean "exactly 100%". It's a device to communicate intent.
> You could just as sensibly flip the argument and argue that the garden-variety 'nerdy' atheist is talking literally about atheism but really doing negative theology ("your idea of God is totally wrong and does not exist, because the true God is necessarily inaccessible to human reason") but that would be silly and make you look like a dork too.
Yeah, it'd make you look like a dork because it'd be obviously incorrect. The intentions of your garden-variety nerd talking about atheism are pretty clear, and it's not to make some greater theological point. When you talk to people who talk down on religion and believers, it's usually really easy to tell whether it's because only they themselves understand the True Intention Of God or whether they just think Christians are stupid and if you're smart you have to be an atheist. Said garden-variety nerd is the latter.
> There will always be people falling off on one side of the spectrum or the other. Personally, I haven't met anyone who takes the bible literally, and I know a _lot_ of Christians, including pastors and priests.
I grew up, and still live, in a conservative state and a conservative family. That hasn't been my experience at all: I know a lot of people for whom the bible is a literal truth.
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> The intentions of your garden-variety nerd talking about atheism are pretty clear, and it's not to make some greater theological point.
I agree about the underlying intentions, but I was talking about the typical, literal arguments for garden-variety 'rational' atheism. The point that these arguments tend to map quite cleanly to negative theology would usually be considered a pretty strong one as a matter of philosophy. Of course, this can only be said to further highlight the difference in intentions.
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