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The Science of the Benefits of Religion

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Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#21

Post by ecpottinger »

I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses - Please read on before you just dismiss what I have experienced.

Going door to door I have meet plenty of people who say "I don't believe in God, we got here thru evolution!".

So I ask the simple question which theory of evolution do they think is probably has the right idea.

Too often I hear, "Survival of the strongest." or "What? There is more than one theory about how evolution works?".

What is clear to me is that to these people evolution is a BELIEF and not something they thought of, it is as much a religion to them as mine is to me. Worse, I can study and agree or disagree with things I was taught, too often people are just blindly accepting because they do not want to put any efforts in.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#22

Post by PartiallyTyped »

rajin444 wrote: post #12
estaseuropano wrote: post #6

There seems to be little doubt that religion, faith, spirituality or rite can have benefits. The question is how to get the good side of all these (community, meaning, satisfaction and fulfilment) without the nasty side (exclusion and intolerance, resistance to or denial of reality, imposition of impossible standards, the denial of one's own preferences and wants). Religion has been a major source of soothing and a m…

The issues you describe apply to any grouping of people. Tribes have their own truths. Look at how popular those "we believe science is real" signs are. You could remove religion and we'd still have the same issues. I don't think it's possible to solve them. The best solution is going to be a world where a long, happy life is guaranteed by forces outside man's control. This will likely alleviate a lot of the tribal i…

The difference between religion and other groups is that it provides an impenetrable shield to those who wield it, and virtually anything can be deflected a-la

> God's ways are mysterious

fashion. Any differing positions appear as attacks against the person's religion, which - when it carries sufficient argumentative power - can shake the foundations of the person's world model. This, in turn, prevents them from accepting the differing position because such events induce fear and shut down mental faculties, effectively putting a person in a fight or flight mode.

Furthermore, it prevents people from maturing and accepting integral parts of the human condition, such as the permanence of death, it provides a false sense of security that renders people incapacitated from taking meaningful action (God will find a way if God wills it), and finally gives a false sense importance and grandiose to puny humans who live in utter ignorance of their own insignificance in the medium (NB humanity scale) and grand scheme of things.

To reach the solution that you point to, society needs to accept that free-will is an illusion, and that is inherently incompatible with Abrahamic religions.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#23

Post by ceilingcorner »

estaseuropano wrote: post #6

There seems to be little doubt that religion, faith, spirituality or rite can have benefits. The question is how to get the good side of all these (community, meaning, satisfaction and fulfilment) without the nasty side (exclusion and intolerance, resistance to or denial of reality, imposition of impossible standards, the denial of one's own preferences and wants). Religion has been a major source of soothing and a m…

This is the classical liberal take: ultra-individualism. Everyone can have their own god(s) (even metaphorically) and things will just work out if everyone got along.

Historical trends seem to be going in the exact opposite direction. Individualism is sustainable to a certain point, but not when it becomes the default position of a society. All of the countries, belief systems, and ideologies that are succeeding today are running away from individualism. Whether that’s good or bad, is up to you.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#24

Post by PartiallyTyped »

ecpottinger wrote: post #21

I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses - Please read on before you just dismiss what I have experienced. Going door to door I have meet plenty of people who say "I don't believe in God, we got here thru evolution!". So I ask the simple question which theory of evolution do they think is probably has the right idea. Too often I hear, "Survival of the strongest." or "What? There is more than one theory about how evolution wor…

A belief does not constitute a religion, people have all sorts of irrational beliefs, but that doesn't make them religion.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#25

Post by technothrasher »

benrmatthews wrote: post #14

I was fortunate enough to be involved with a modern secular community that aimed to become a non-religious church: Sunday Assembly. Take the best bits of religion, including purpose, structure, community, and tradition, but make it available for non-believers. We even got so far as making the interview stage of Y Combinator: https://benrmatthews.com/meeting-heroes-y-combinator-intervi... During the interview, Sanders…

I've attended a few Unitarian Universalist services, and they're very open to "non-believers", as well as pretty much any type of personal belief. They seemed to be much more interested in community and rite than to forcing dogma. Still, while they were certainly a friendly and pleasant group of people, I found it all a bit too fuzzy with objective truth to be my cup if tea. I don't have anything like Sunday Assembly in my area, and occasionally thought of trying to start some kind of weekly humanist gathering. Rather than the UU message that "any belief is welcome", I wanted to convey more of a "everyone is welcome, personal religious beliefs aside" message. Where we could just work on humanistic goals together.

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#26

Post by [deleted] »

snuser wrote: post #13
estaseuropano wrote: post #6

There seems to be little doubt that religion, faith, spirituality or rite can have benefits. The question is how to get the good side of all these (community, meaning, satisfaction and fulfilment) without the nasty side (exclusion and intolerance, resistance to or denial of reality, imposition of impossible standards, the denial of one's own preferences and wants). Religion has been a major source of soothing and a m…

The real problem with religion is that there's more than one

[deleted]

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#27

Post by estaseuropano »

lalaland1125 wrote: post #9

It's interesting to think of religion as a societal tool that has co-evolved along with humanity. Societies with more beneficial religions would prosper and societies with less beneficial religious would die out. It's thus no surprise that the religions that survived until the present day promote human survival. For example, it's no accident that most major religions heavily encourage their followers to have a lot of…

I would warmly recommend the last chapter(s) of 'The Selfish Gene'. Now an aged book but still largely up to date. In those last chapter(s) Dawkins invented the word meme as analogy to gene: a meme is a self-replicating piece of information. Like genes that are successful (in the environment they are in) propagate so do memes that are successful. Religion is the ultimate meme complex, it is a set of ideas that lives 'on top of' us and as long as it doesn't kill its host it may spread further.

In that sense, while I would guess at minimum religion can't kill its host, it does from this logic not necessarily benefit the host. An aggressively missionising or crusading religion might outcompete one that is peaceful and better for its host. And even a peaceful variant (see original Buddhism or zen Buddhism) might evolve into an aggressive, exclusive and murderous ones (see Buddhist monks in Myanmar firing up and demanding the genocide of the mostly muslim rohingya ethnic group).

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#29

Post by BrightGlow »

ecpottinger wrote: post #21

I am one of Jehovah's Witnesses - Please read on before you just dismiss what I have experienced. Going door to door I have meet plenty of people who say "I don't believe in God, we got here thru evolution!". So I ask the simple question which theory of evolution do they think is probably has the right idea. Too often I hear, "Survival of the strongest." or "What? There is more than one theory about how evolution wor…

I share your frustration, the people who you were talking to likely also had a misconception of what evolution and scientific theories in general are, or were stating it poorly. It's not accurate to describe it as a "belief" it's more like "best current guess that we have but we'll change our mind if a new guess comes up that is better able to explain things".

Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion

#30

Post by golemiprague »

estaseuropano wrote: post #6

There seems to be little doubt that religion, faith, spirituality or rite can have benefits. The question is how to get the good side of all these (community, meaning, satisfaction and fulfilment) without the nasty side (exclusion and intolerance, resistance to or denial of reality, imposition of impossible standards, the denial of one's own preferences and wants). Religion has been a major source of soothing and a m…

It's interesting that you are not including in your list one of the most prominent contribution of religion which is morals. A lot of moral codes that we take as given were introduced and hammered into people minds by the religions. Religion is not mostly about "spiritually", it is about living life according to some code of rules which is in some religions much more important than spirituality per se.
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