The Science of the Benefits of Religion

Basing anything on false or inexact beliefs won't leads to lasting desirable outcomes IMO*. Some argues to read religious texts as metaphors but I think it's just a way to circumvent the reality. *except for charities but benevolence is obviously not (only) tied to religions

This is something I've thought about a lot, and I say this as a diehard atheist. Historically (and even now), religion has served two useful purposes:

1. As a provider of community. There are of course other ways to socialize with wider groups. Sports clubs, going to the pub, classes, that sort of thing. But it's a lot more interest-driven and haphazard.

2. As a provider of and enforcer for a moral code.

Here are some things I believe to be true:

1. A lot of people like being told what to do. This isn't necessarily unhealthy or bad. I also believe in decision fatigue. We defer decisions to others all the time;

2. Fear is an easier tool for keeping people in line than any alternative. There's a carrot and a stick with religion. The carrot is paradise in the afterlife (depending on your flavour of religion). The stick is partly eternal damnation but much more important than that, it's the fear of losing that community.

3. The majority of people only act in an ethical manner out of fear of the consequences.

Now looking at the political situation in the US, we have the rise of Christian conservatives. Just the name "conservative" is worth examining. It is of course derived from "conserve". The intent is obvious: it is to resist change, to maintain traditions and generally to keep doing things the way we "always" have. It almost seems like to be a conservative requires you to believe things were better in the past and changes are just making everything worse. At least that's how it seems.

It shouldn't really surprise anyone that religion and conservatism tend to be correlated but does one cause the other? I honestly don't know.

But what I find fascinating is that the desire to be told what to do combined with the mistrust in government fomented by religions (as in, the person is to put their faith in [deity] and the church rather than government) means these people are so easily manipulated.

Take the Covid vaccine (and masks). Every current and former president (including Trump), every governor, every Senator and all but a handful of Congressmen are vaccinated. I'm also sure every Fox News host is too. Yet these same vaccinated people are quite happy and willing to pander to whack job conspiracies as a means of control.

I find it ironic that the people who I'm sure genuinely think they're standing up for "freedom" by fighting against mask mandates are in fact least free because they're so easily manipulated.

So I guess my point is, I'm not sure these problems go away if, say, religion goes away.

The main difference is that for evolution most people can point to (or try to point to) a legitimate source of authority for why they believe evolution is true.

Whereas for religion, there is nothing to point to other than blind faith.

This is very interesting to me. I am just "Saturday browsing" but plan to try to read what I can about your community. My first impression is surprise that the group was trying to raise venture capital :) I will find out more as I read i guess.

Sir Isaac Newton was a devout Christian theologist. Perhaps his adopted philosophy offers discipline features that aided in the production of fruit prized by the scientific community. Islamic discipline gave us fundamental mathematical systems. Nikola Tesla thought of his brain as an antennae for the universal core ("I don't know its secrets, but I know it exists"). George Carlin has a bit about how the aliens don't talk to us because of our own self-centered hubris.

Religious thought is there for a reason. Science searches for explanations for observable phenomena. If you call yourself an "atheist" and announce your belief in "nothing", then you will shut yourself off from fellow citizens (complete with their own unique knowledge) who are inheriting rehearsed traditions. I've been taught to never tell someone they're wrong. Why would you want to become someone's ideological enemy? Perhaps there are fundamental, ancient gears turning if you embrace religion. When describing my complicated views about religion to my own "simple", hard working father - I was told "Well, I just go to church because everybody is there." You must speak their language so that they sing for you. Their willingness to profess their view of the world is a beautiful, valuable thing.

An honorably discharged American marine with a missing leg told me that Islam preaches punishment, while Christianity preaches forgiveness. Both of these concepts are necessary to steer a population, and both can be issued excessively. Forgiveness can mean more intimate personal data released to the priest in a confessional booth, and punishment can mean less corrosive civil behavior overall.

I've had hail strike my car seconds after sending the sarcastic chat message "the algorithms replaced the priesthood". I've had lightning strike dozens of feet away from where I slept in the middle of the night in a parking lot mere hours after watching the clip [0] of Christof demanding his team "DO IT!".

If you want proof, you've incentivized your industry to make my car constantly connected to an LTE tower by default. In a Faraday cage protected HDD somewhere, I'm sure my file is residing along with billions of others, courtesy of Pegasus (et al). Unless you are going to say "lightning struck the same place 4 times in a row." [1]

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”

[0] https://youtu.be/wcMCS_6oung?t=248

[1] https://www.extremetech.com/computing/212586-google-data-cen...