I used to be a Mormon, my family converted when I was young. At no point did I believe their teachings. Like many cults being required to believe something obviously wrong keeps the normies out and clearly defines who is in the 'in group' and who is in the 'out group'. Just by saying you believe it signals to others that you are willing to lie in order to belong.

I really enjoyed my time in the church. There is huge pressure to conform in one area but this means your free to be yourself in others. I was a nerd and constantly tormented for it outside the church. (The US is much nicer to nerds than those in my country where it considered a civil duty by other children to beat it out of you). Inside the church I was treated like a normal person. Similarly, Dijkstra had to leave Europe to escape a 'religious' academia and found refuge in 'backwards' religious Texas.

There is a natural human tendency, an emergent behavior, to self organize into 'religious' groups. I see the same behavioral patterns in environmentalism, veganism, feminism etc. By keeping 'religion' to religion there is less of for it in others areas.

I left the Church quite young because I didn't need it anymore and thought the church was stupid. I still liked the people in it.

Obviously if I was gay I would have a different story.

"Like many cults being required to believe something obviously wrong keeps the normies out and clearly defines who is in the 'in group' and who is in the 'out group'."

Its the same game played with politics instead of religion in academia, "coastal tech", soft sciences, mass media... Under static ruleset conditions, I donno, mid 60s to 2010 "boomer generation" lets say, its sort of an intelligence test to see if you're smart enough to observe others then play along, and whats more important than action is the social signalling to show you can be a trustable follower. If the players are willing intelligent players the game works really well and results will naturally be good. When people grow tired of the game or are too dumb to play or actively dislike the entrenched ruleset, you get periods of political turmoil, "populism" etc. People get very angry that their hard fought position in the game is wiped away with a new ruleset. "Polarization" especially politically is just the future being here but unevenly distributed, and the legacy ruleset isn't going to be deprecated or sunset quietly especially while those about to be obsolete still have a legacy voice.

"Obviously if I was gay I would have a different story."

The analogy with the above is white people starting to abandon the Democratic party, resulting in Trump, etc.

lol, this is comical. White people are not persecuted by a major US political party run by and composed of mostly whites. Sure, some people perceive it so because they have a narrow...argh...different understanding of the world.

> Similarly, Dijkstra had to leave Europe to escape a 'religious' academia and found refuge in 'backwards' religious Texas.

Do you have a source for this? Seems like an interesting story and I couldn't find mention on his Wikipedia page.

I don't have a direct quote on hand. It is my understanding of the situation given the EWDs that I've read as well as his Dutch documentary.

The following addresses his reasoning on why Texas isn't as backwards as would be expected; https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/OtherDocs....

And I think the Dutch TV show goes into specifically why he had to leave europe in order to pursue his ideas.

For future reference, generally your posts are better accepted if you explain the reasoning behind your main point, especially if they are controversial. Controversial posts are generally well received on this site as long as they are logical and thought provoking.

Meh, not really thought provoking. Poll any women or non white person who lived in Utah and has experienced big city life.