RE: Bring Back the Bullies >>> Some of Us, Self-Evidently ... Need an Ass-Kicking (ComedyOpenMic #39)
Block, your analysis is spot on and as far as the Social Justice crowd is concerned ... that's the problem. You're using logic, reason and rationale. Your employing the Enlightenment Ideal that belief, and subsequently behavior, ought to be predicated upon providing evidence-of-the-assertion.
As you've undoubtedly noticed in my many posts, comments and replies on the subject, I'm vehemently against "Ideological Thinking," irrespective of its source (Far Left or Far Right ... a lot of what underlies cryptocurrencies is Anarchism which I have argued is an Ideology).
Let's get our definitions straight: Ideological Thinking is the assertion, stated as an axiomatic First Principle Truth, that something is Absolutely True ... in the absence of supporting evidence, and even in the face of a mountain of contradictory evidence. To an ideologue, such First Principle Truths are unquestionable, and to question them, is blasphemy. These ideologies have all the hallmarks of a religion.
(Let me hasten to add that not all religionists are ideologues. The New Testament, for example, is replete with admonitions about Faith being predicated upon 'belief in the absence of evidence' ... and hence, it is being truthful in its assertion. Some religionists take this at face value, admitting that they don't KNOW for certain that their religious beliefs are true but believe them anyway. BTW, science is replete with scientists harboring beliefs based upon a hypothesis ... they believe something is true, but admit that their hypothesis is yet to be proven.
Other religionists, however, are ideologues, starting that the DO KNOW that their beliefs are true ... because it says so in the Bible (the Bible is their evidence) ... even though the Bible itself clearly states that Faith is the belief in the absence of evidence. Circular logic.)
The spread of Ideological Thinking is far more pervasive than many people believe. The Democratic Party in the US is in the midst of a Civil War, The Establishment Democrats (Center-Left) vs the Progressives (Far Left ideologues). Educational systems, from Kindergarten through Graduate Studies, are under a constant barrage by Social Justice activists. The term "Identity Politics" is a reference to this phenomenon and the debate about Political Correctness centers upon many of these themes.
To give you an idea about how bad things have gotten on college campuses, I would refer you to The Heterodox Academy. This Academy was recently founded by some of the top College Professors in the United States, including the preeminent professors and authors, Johnathon Haidt and Stephen Pinker (arguably the most famous and respected Social Scientists alive). They are joined by 2,300+ other professors of various political leanings.
As Haidt explains, universities must choose: Either stand for Social Justice (ideological activism) or stand for Veritas (evidence-based Truth). The organization now ranks US universities on this basis. I would HIGHLY recommend the following video to anyone seeking to understand the basis of the political/cultural conflict on modern-day campuses and in modern-day society more generally.
Jonathon Haidt's Explanation: https://heterodoxacademy.org/one-telos-truth-or-social-justice-2/
Quill
Actually, what it says is faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). Depending on the translation, it may use "assurance" and "conviction" in lieu of "substance" and "evidence," or similar words. The verse has nothing to do with politics, social justice, economics, or anything of the sort. It's recognized by theologians as a statement of spiritual reality similar to "the proof is in the pudding." You want to know what parmesan tart tastes like, the best way to know (and I mean "to truly know") is to taste it. All the flowery words in the lexicon can't get close enough to do it justice so just try a bite. That's what faith is. It's a "try a bite" spiritual reality.
The problem with faith is when people try to misapply it to areas where faith isn't proper evidence. Scientists make observations then form hypotheses and test them. Depending on the outcome of their tests, they may form theories. No scientist in the world, not even Christian scientists, and no Muslim scientist, no Jewish scientist, nor any other religious scientist would even make a scientific claim on the basis of faith. And all of us know why.
People of all stripes don't understand what these terms mean. That's why you hear religionists dismiss sound ideas as mere "theories," except that theories are widely accepted ideas among a huge cross-section of scientists who have tested them, made observations, recorded data, and have solid reasons for forming their conclusions. What you often find in the area of politics is people making claims that can't be substantiated by evidence--because there is none--nor faith--because there's no "substance" to their beliefs. They simply make assertions based on what they want to be true, and they believe that if they believe it to be true strong or long enough, then it will be true. Unfortunately, many of them call this "faith," which, of course, it isn't.
By the way, there are different kinds of evidence. The legal system looks at different types of evidence (circumstantial, physical, etc.) when solving crimes. The civil law arena has a really murky view of evidence, but jurisprudence has its own culture. Historians look at archaeological and other types of evidence when drawing conclusions about their line of work. In politics, there's no real clear way to determine what is evidence, so people just make shit up and call it evidence. As you noted, they do it on the left and they do it on the right. And the funny thing is, they each rightly dismiss each other's cockamamie ideas while simultaneously holding their own up as some kind of badge of incredible honor. And we have a Constitution that protects everyone's right to do this. Huah, power to the Magna Carta!