> Weird definition of dominant
By dominant, I mean among people who would read Plato.
Can you point me to a single academic department or branch of government who acts under different pretenses?
> Most scientists in the US believe in God or a higher power, most Americans do too
Ok. But this is mostly a result of unexamined conflicting ideas. The cultural domination overwhelms to the point where most people are secular materialists + God. Their assumptions are almost identical (God is a scientist, things just happen, etc). Radically different Christians do exist (God led me to the grocery store for a purpose), but it’s not the norm.
Do you subscribe to the idea that Christianity is not in decline?
> Where are all these nihilistic materialists people are always talking about?
The managerial class of western society.
I'm sorry, but I am firmly ensconced in the managerial class of western society and the people around me are not nihilistic materialists. They are, perhaps, liberal in the classical sense, but that isn't nihilistic materialism.
Almost all Americans believe in moral ideals, human rights, etc, etc, etc. Christianity may be in decline, but that is at least partially separate.
Well I agree that folk Christianity has morphed into a humanism. But what do those people do if you push on that. What intellectual framework do they use to make sense of the world?
In my experience the humanism part is an unexamined social nicety that isn’t consistent with the rest of their beliefs.
Genuinely, I think if you push on PMC types you will first, indeed, get some vaguely utilitarian thinking, but then if you push further, you will arrive again at teleological justifications. As far as I can tell, this kind of thinking is basically endemic in the human race and I frankly despair at the possibility of human beings crawling out from beneath it.
Its not a deep observation that you can't be a utilitarian without an enfolding moral framework and most people have one and in western civilization that framework is basically the one inherited from the cultural aether. From my point of view that kind of sloppy thinking is basically the same as believing in God.