The excellent review of the Book of Abraham that will soon be a guest post on Astral Codex Ten is far from the first time that one or another of us has proposed that we invent some rationality-adjacent post-church quasi-religion to promote prosociality. But the discourse has remained abstract, setting up design drivers rather than actually designing anything in particular. So here is my concrete design proposal for such a quasi-religion.
The prosocial virtues of honesty, reliability and acting in good faith used to be, in antiquity, a single virtue: Fides. (The expression bona fides comes from there). The ancient Romans personified Fides 👰 into a lovely goddess that was central to the Roman state/religion; the Senate itself would meet in her temple to ceremonially sign its most important international treaties.
I'm basically suggesting a revival of that temple.
What would a Fides temple actually do? Would visitors put on togas and basically LARP? That might be fun on occasion, but I prefer sincerity.
In sincerity, I won't compromise on naturalism. Classicists are undecided which Roman statements about Fides were talking about a human virtue (or civic duty) versus a divine agent. It might be anachronistic to suppose they would have distinguished between these two things. I do distinguish; my demarcation line to theism forbids beliefs that say or imply that Fides knows what she is doing.
Pragmatically, Fides temples were places Romans went to sign agreements and speak oaths. The threat of ignominy (and for supernaturalists, the literal divine wrath of the goddess) for breaking an oath that She had witnessed reportedly helped to keep those. In modern psychology terms, it is plausible the special place, pomp and circumstance, and usually the presence of attentive human witnesses, should truly have significantly helped, by building a super-salient flashbulb memory that (compared to a memory of a mundane promise) would extra vividly and lastingly have come up in moments of temptation to break the oath or treaty.
What oaths then?
The Giving What We Can pledge definitely qualifies. It is a highly ambitious act with lifelong consequences that deserves being made into a festive occasion, and a more lasting and enjoyable memory, than anybody's repurposed living room can accommodate.
Marriage vows fit I think, although in Rome they were not Fides temple business.
State administrative matters, especially signing international treaties, were. But the bulk of Fides temple matters were private business deals - like a pre-secularization notary, no state involvement required.
But to my taste, a purely pragmatic institution, a glorified notary, ticks a bit too few boxes in most of the competing definitions of "religion" the evidently powerful phenomenon that some of us want to harness. I also want this to promote general personal rather than occasional or transactional faithfulness: an equivalent of piety or Taqwa, which I understand to be pre-modern spiritually charged frameworks for self-improvement. All religions happen to have at least one of those; lots of secular ones exist and are among the non-religious toolset that some of us have declared insufficient.
But that's all so abstract, again. To get more specific, please imagine:
You've completed your day's journey to the big and very beautiful Fides Temple. On the walls are the bronze plates on which are engraved oaths and agreements that were important enough to somebody so they chose to make a donation to the temple in order to have them engraved and exhibited. There might also be a wall of ignominy (the superlative of public shame) in a material other than bronze, with the names of forsworn people? In the middle of the main hall is the vaunted dais, on which looms the Fides statue, tastefully 3D printed from bronze. There's a queue of clients leading there. Because you made a no-cost appointment earlier, you're allowed to get in line. Many visitors are witnessing from all sides of the hall. A few cameras pointed at the dais are streaming to the temple's social media channels. You don't need to wear a microphone because there are enough of those around. The people queuing in front of you one by one reach the dais; each does whatever thing they came to do up there. When it's finally your turn, you get up and you solemnly swear:
“May fealty to fidelity,
my duty to be just,
damn me into ignominy,
were I to break your trust.”
What would that do to you, and for how long? Would it, or would it not, be worth a visit to that Fides temple?
The excellent review of the Book of Abraham that will soon be a guest post on Astral Codex Ten is far from the first time that one or another of us has proposed that we invent some rationality-adjacent post-church quasi-religion to promote prosociality. But the discourse has remained abstract, setting up design drivers rather than actually designing anything in particular. So here is my concrete design proposal for such a quasi-religion.
The prosocial virtues of honesty, reliability and acting in good faith used to be, in antiquity, a single virtue: Fides. (The expression bona fides comes from there). The ancient Romans personified Fides 👰 into a lovely goddess that was central to the Roman state/religion; the Senate itself would meet in her temple to ceremonially sign its most important international treaties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fides_(deity)
I'm basically suggesting a revival of that temple.
What would a Fides temple actually do? Would visitors put on togas and basically LARP? That might be fun on occasion, but I prefer sincerity.
In sincerity, I won't compromise on naturalism. Classicists are undecided which Roman statements about Fides were talking about a human virtue (or civic duty) versus a divine agent. It might be anachronistic to suppose they would have distinguished between these two things. I do distinguish; my demarcation line to theism forbids beliefs that say or imply that Fides knows what she is doing.
Pragmatically, Fides temples were places Romans went to sign agreements and speak oaths. The threat of ignominy (and for supernaturalists, the literal divine wrath of the goddess) for breaking an oath that She had witnessed reportedly helped to keep those. In modern psychology terms, it is plausible the special place, pomp and circumstance, and usually the presence of attentive human witnesses, should truly have significantly helped, by building a super-salient flashbulb memory that (compared to a memory of a mundane promise) would extra vividly and lastingly have come up in moments of temptation to break the oath or treaty.
What oaths then?
But to my taste, a purely pragmatic institution, a glorified notary, ticks a bit too few boxes in most of the competing definitions of "religion" the evidently powerful phenomenon that some of us want to harness. I also want this to promote general personal rather than occasional or transactional faithfulness: an equivalent of piety or Taqwa, which I understand to be pre-modern spiritually charged frameworks for self-improvement. All religions happen to have at least one of those; lots of secular ones exist and are among the non-religious toolset that some of us have declared insufficient.
But that's all so abstract, again. To get more specific, please imagine:
You've completed your day's journey to the big and very beautiful Fides Temple. On the walls are the bronze plates on which are engraved oaths and agreements that were important enough to somebody so they chose to make a donation to the temple in order to have them engraved and exhibited. There might also be a wall of ignominy (the superlative of public shame) in a material other than bronze, with the names of forsworn people? In the middle of the main hall is the vaunted dais, on which looms the Fides statue, tastefully 3D printed from bronze. There's a queue of clients leading there. Because you made a no-cost appointment earlier, you're allowed to get in line. Many visitors are witnessing from all sides of the hall. A few cameras pointed at the dais are streaming to the temple's social media channels. You don't need to wear a microphone because there are enough of those around. The people queuing in front of you one by one reach the dais; each does whatever thing they came to do up there. When it's finally your turn, you get up and you solemnly swear: “May fealty to fidelity, my duty to be just, damn me into ignominy, were I to break your trust.” What would that do to you, and for how long? Would it, or would it not, be worth a visit to that Fides temple?