Gender Ideaology vs Religious Ideaolgy

[Bunnyasmyname]

I follow my faith and consider myself pretty religious, however it struck me that many consider all this trans/gender identity movement as some kind of religion.
Upon reflection, it does indeed have some comparisons.

I am now wondering what other religious feminists thought. Is it just the addition of faith or the millennia of sacred scripture that separates ‘real’ religions? Is this how it was for the early Christians when their religion was emerging?
How does one justify belief in God and yet decry this other ideology?

Apologies for my clumsiness - English isn’t my first language, but I hope you get the gist of what I am trying to say!

The 'problem of evil' can be successfully approached from a very different angle if you consider polytheism. Perhaps there are many gods, not just one.
John Michael Greer wrote a short book explaining the philosophy of this.

Back to the OP - what is it that separates a 'belief' from a 'religion'? Some people may believe that women are not actually equal to men but are instead intrinsically inferior as a sex. Some people belief that it is possible to change from being 'a man' to 'a woman'.
I think religion has many other features and aspects, as discussed upthread, which make it more complex than a single simple 'belief' in something.

Gender ideology as a movement has some of the complexity of a religion, such as the political aspect, the ritualistic pronouncements, etc.

I am now wondering what other religious feminists thought.

I'm not sure what you meant to say. Are you asking if feminism is like a religion?

Good implies evil - but not necessarily Evil.

Sorry, I couldn’t resist pointing out the upper case E of Evil in your sentence. My tongue in cheek reversal is inaccurate, btw. It may be true to state “Good implies the possibility of evil - but not necessarily Evil.”

I would say that religion describes a belief in something that it outside of oneself, in most cases a benevolent higher being. Most religions are based in faith in that other being and elements of worship, service and morality are centred around the "goodness" and "holiness" of that being. Religions also generally adhere to there being an objective truth. Most religions are based in elements of self-sacrifice and service and benevolence to other people.

Gender ideology is the opposite. It is the worship of "self". There is no truth other than what the self says is the truth. Everyone else must believe in that subjective "truth" in order to validate the self, even in the face of evidence of an opposite objective truth. What is good or moral is whatever serves that self and the self's (erroneous) subjective "truth". Anyone pointing out the objective truth is evil. There is no concept of benevolence to others so when that self "truth" harms others it doesn't matter as long as the self "truth" is being validated. The self is the higher being that all else must serve and worship.

I assume religious feminists means feminists who follow a faith such as Christianity or Islam.

Yeah, I noticed that myself - but too late to edit and add 'The concept of' to the start of the sentence or rewrite it e e cummings style.

What do you see as the difference? Either morality is naturalistic, or it has some kind of further basis in the structure of reality, or it is just something we impose from an arbitrary set of preferences.

I would say that religion describes a belief in something that it outside of oneself,

This is something I think is quite interesting.

Almost every religion has a certain amount of focus on transcending ego as a path to wholeness. Whereas elevation of ego is seen as a sort of road to Hell, both for individuals and the community.

Psychology generally takes a similar road. It's by getting away from ego that we find a stable sense of self that is really self-sufficient, and that's the only way to really integrate our personality in a mature way. Not that we ignore others wholly, we are relational, social beings, but we can't depend on them to hold it all together for us.

Gender ideology, and a lot of id politics, seem to be almost the opposite of that.

I was thinking of any religion that wrongly claims that a certain "scripture" is providing, "instructions from god".

Obviously if the "scripture" is actually not coming from a real deity, then you have a potential problem and it could be harmful and immoral to follow the instructions.

Although in theory, a "scripture" could be a good way to know moral truths if it really did come from a Deity and you could reliably know that.

There may be other ways for theistic moral thinking to go wrong.

That's kind of what I was getting at.

Let's move it away from morality for a moment.

If an object is moving at 12mph, that's a simple fact. If we say it is moving fast, that introduces the concept of relative speed - if the speed of an object can be fast that implies the alternative that it can be slow.

However, it doesn't imply that Fast and Slow exist as independent entities, rather than merely being subsidiary qualities of an object. There is no Flash-style Speed Force required for an object to be judged as moving quickly or slowly.

Similarly if we judge an event (or person) as evil (or more likely as 'bad'), this suggests that events and people can also be good. But it says nothing about the possibility of Good (or God) existing as a separate power or entity.

Ah, but then you have to define 'wrongly' and 'real deity'.

The "if it really did come from a Deity and you could reliably know that" clause is an impossible one.

Either it's all made up; or they are all potentially true but you have no way to know which one is right (and because they are contradictory most of them must be wrong).

Yea I think it’s quasi religious, it’s got faith and transubstiation of the flesh. Faith that belief and following the teachings of TWAW will increase your happiness.
it also gives you belonging to a special group and requires its adherents to convert the unbelievers

I agree that there are certain facets of gender ideology that have similarities with religion, eg. an agreed catechism, the idea of a priesthood that define who the in-group of believers and the out-group of heretics are. However, most religions post-Enlightenment don't require others to convert to their way of thinking in order to validate their own faith, the way that gender ideology does. They also go out of their way to elucidate their thinking, and most of them welcome debate and doubt.

In that sense, gender ideology has far more in common with totalistic movements - sometimes these show up as cults, sometimes as political movements. If you look at the 8 criteria of thought reform outlined by Lifton in his study of Maoism, the parallels with gender ideology are very clear. Gender ideology is also full of thought-terminating cliches such as "transwomen are women" or "better a living son than a dead daughter" - excellent FWR thread here from 2018 on gender thought terminating cliches.

Interestingly, many trans activists turn this around and accuse gender critical thinking of being a cult full of thought terminating cliches. I think it's really important, especially in a world where trans activists refuse to debate and speaking up at work can get gender critical women fired, to go out of your way to read articles from the opposite perspective online. If you stick to your own echo chamber you'll easily think that everyone agrees with you so I do try and go out of my way to read articles like these, in order to test my own arguments:
https://transsafety.network/posts/east-london-teacher-sacked/
https://www.peopleleavecults.com/post/anti-lgbtq-rhetoric

I think "wrongly" is pretty easy to understand.

Anyway, in theory, the evidence for scripture A having a divine source could be way better than scripture B or C.

However, let's ignore that. Theism doesn't necessarily need a religion with a scripture.

We can just consider whether moral truths would be better grounded on theism vs naturalism.

We could. And what would your argument be for basing them on an unprovable idea?

As I said:

"But I will also suggest a practical reason for belief in God: we need theism for other core beliefs like free will and moral responsibility. Philosophical naturalism is probably just going to end up as moral nihilism."

I already mentioned one example:

"As far as I know, you will not find any of the well known atheists defending a strong (libertarian) form of free will that would be required for moral responsibility.

By "moral responsibility", I mean that if an agent has no real power to, for example, avoid murdering someone, then that's destroying moral responsibility. You can still put them in prison as a deterrent, and say they "acted freely" in some sort of sense; but they aren't really going to be responsible for the crime as a moral agent.

Some philosophers may still try to defend a strong form of free will under naturalism.

Naturalism doesn't have to say that physical things are the only type of thing that exist, but it will place emphasis and primacy on the physical world.

So with naturalism, they need to argue that a physical system can develop to the point, where you get an emergent property, that is somehow outside the ordinary physical laws."

Another example, would be that with theism the underlying or greater reality can be moral in nature, and the "natural world" can have a moral purpose.

With philosphical naturalism, the underlying reality is just a blind process and the natural world has no purpose at all.

So while you can say, perhaps, that morality came about for evolutionary "purpose" and is needed for group cohesion necessary for survival, necessary for the passing on of genes; it's not going to connect to the underlying reality in a way that would be seen as meaningful and valuable by typical humans, because at that level everything just becomes a blind process and mechanism without purpose.

No, that is an argument against basing it on naturalistic principles. Not one for basing it on theism.

The possibility of relative speed implies, and indeed requires, the objective existence of movement though which I think is the relevant comparator.

Which is to say, to make the claim that something is more good than something else - lets say sharing food with your neighbours rather than murdering them and taking their house - is completely meaningless unless there is some real meaning of good or not good.

Otherwise you could just as easily say it is better to murder them and take their house.

Now, you do get the odd example where someone does argue that is better, kind of a survival of the fittest thing. But they are still making the case that there is some real meaning to good and not good, that it is part of the fabric of reality. Not that they just prefer it personally.

It's not just a theoretical thing for most people either, it's deeply felt and meaningful and structures whole societies. Justice is hugely important to people.

Even people who like to argue that it's all culturally relative, in practice get very het up when they think there is some kind of injustice going on.

If reality isn't moral in some sense, you aren't legitimately going to be able to derive a true ethical framework from it. All you would have is nature, and we can all see that nature has a very harsh code, nothing like what most people would call an ethical framework.

How does one justify belief in God and yet decry this other ideology?

Are you trying to force your religious faith on other people in the face of scientific evidence to the contrary?

Thought not - most of us don't. We speak of our faith, are prepared to discuss and defend it, but don't insist that everyone else tiptoe around it and treat it like something precious (which it is to us, but we are aware is not to others). This is particularly true of Christianity and Judaism.

There is no measurable evidence for God or gods - but neither is there any evidence that a deity/ deities don't exist.

With trans ideology there is no evidence of a "male brain" in a "female body" (or vice versa; there is no evidence that there is a "gendered soul" which exists in the opposite sexed body; there is no evidence for a gender "spectrum" - many, many sexes/ genders etc. However there is a HELL of a lot of evidence which proves that humans, like other mammals are a binary species, that one is either male or female (and even those individuals who suffer DSDs are either male or female - not half-way between the two), and the differences between male and female brains are there - but are not statistically significant.

So - belief in God, no scientific evidence either way (which is why we call it "faith".)

Belief in gender-woo - no evidence for, tons of evidence against.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I am a licensed minister)

The second example I gave compared theism to naturalism; if naturalism has a problem that theism doesn't have, then that seems like an argument in favour of theism.

Maybe you could argue that polytheism is even better to ground morality if you wanted.

The first example about free will is admittedly going to be more controversial, but on the point mentioned, theism doesn't have to try to derive everything from a physical basis. It can say that physical reality and consciousness are designed to work together, and physical reality isn't dominant over consciousness.

The second example I gave compared theism to naturalism; if naturalism has a problem that theism doesn't have, then that seems like an argument in favour of theism.

Not at all. Theism may lack a small problem but have multiple larger ones.

A plastic Christmas tree is not biodegradable. This is not an argument in favour of making a tree out of lithium.

theism doesn't have to try to derive everything from a physical basis. It can say that physical reality and consciousness are designed to work together, and physical reality isn't dominant over consciousness.

That doesn't in any way tie consciousness to theism. Or vice versa.

Yes, that's fair in principle; but I think the issue I mentioned isn't a "small problem" at all but a rather large problem.

If we are talking about the "grounding of morality", then it seems like a key issue whether it will connect in a meaningful and valuable way to the underlying reality.

And you haven't pointed to any problems why theism couldn't successfully ground morality. You did give examples like slavery; but as I said, I think that's a distinct issue from "grounding of morality" under theism.

I think it's instead a problem with particular religions or a practical problem with theistic religion where supposed "scripture" is potentially immoral and harmful if it's not really coming from a divine source. So it's really an issue at a different level of the particular moral principles and system you use, and how you know what is correct morality.

you haven't pointed to any problems why theism couldn't successfully ground morality.

I haven't made that claim, so don't need to back it up. But if I did I might start with your

supposed "scripture" is potentially immoral and harmful if it's not really coming from a divine source.

And the absence of a real (and provable) divine source.