be careful mixing religion and philosophy up they are not the same.
One has factual benefits the other we still have no clue about
The Science of the Benefits of Religion
61–70 of 363 posts
Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion
#62I 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…
That seems like a trivial "gotcha" question. I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "which" theory.
Do you mean Lamarckism vs Darwinism? The correct answer is that Lamarckism is wrong.
Do you mean gradual change vs punctuated equilibrium or similar? That's not a "which theory of evolution", which is why people are confused by your question.
It really comes across as a classic "confuse people with trick questions and then try to inject religion into them while they're distracted" tactic. I'm glad I'm done with that sort of thing.
Also, belief in evolution is great, faith in evolution is not. Belief != faith, and religious people need to stop conflating them. If someone came up with an alternate theory for how we got here that explained all of the evidence better, I'd have no trouble believing it, because I don't have "faith in evolution" or any such thing.
Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion
#63There 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…
> imposition of impossible standards
This is one of the pluses, not the minuses. There's nobody out there saying you can achieve the standards. But there are lots of people out there saying you should push yourself in the direction of the standards.
Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion
#64I 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…
100% no. Faith in religion is a completely different thing to believing the scientific method works. Science is self correcting. Religious faith is, by definition, the surrendering of any and every impulse to question the faith to a higher earthly authority. Those earthly authorities are notoriously unreliable (c.f. history of the Jehovah's Witness "end of the world" scenarios). I know this is hard for religious peop…
> Faith in religion is a completely different thing to believing the scientific method works. Science is self correcting.
This is not at all accurate; the faith people express in science is generally identical to the faith other people express in religion, with no difference in the reasons, motivations, or justifications offered.
It is true that science is often self-correcting. The same is true of religion - you don't hear much about the Xhosa cattle-killing cult anymore.
Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Who decides legitimacy and why is a university a more legitimate source of knowledge than a church?
Perhaps because at a university you can learn skills that you can utilize to create things and outcomes with relatively more predictable results.
If you need a complex surgery, would you like to go to a doctor or a priest?
Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is no effort we can put in. Well, that's not quite true. I'm an atheist, and I run a weekly Bible study (which has lately morphed into more of a general theological/philosophical study and discussion group) [1]. Religious traditions are worth studying even if you don't believe in them, if for no other reason, than as a way of better understanding the thought processes of people who do believe in them. [1] htt…
That's not what I meant - I meant that there is no effort that I can put in that would turn me into a deist.
How do you know? Maybe if you studied the Bible you'd end up believing in it. :-)
It turns out that you actually can induce subjective experiences in yourself that I believe are similar to what religious people describe as "feeling the presence of God". It's an interesting and worthwhile exercise (though not what we do in my study group, that's a more academic format). But it's worth doing at least once in your life. It actually feels pretty good, not unlike taking certain psychoactive drugs.
Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion
#67There 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…
> imposition of impossible standards This is one of the pluses, not the minuses. There's nobody out there saying you can achieve the standards. But there are lots of people out there saying you should push yourself in the direction of the standards.
"Impossible standards," for some religions, include things like being happy and fulfilled in a mixed orientation marriage with a large number of children.
Not all directions are worth pushing in, and religion is actually really bad at identifying the good directions.
Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion
#68There 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 nasty side applies just as well to non-religious, non-spiritual communities. Even worse, perhaps. There are many examples.
Look at the intolerance and hypocrisy in France, one of the most secular states. A girl is not allowed to go to school with the Muslim head scarf. This is worse than the Taliban.
France allows insulting the Prophet (pbuh), but you'll get to jail for insulting the president.
France has killed/raped/maimed tens of thousands for the sake of Imperialism.
Just today, France allowed wild bird poaching: https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/pvbdbh/french_pr...
Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion
#69I 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…
There's an old joke: Catholics believe in transubstantiation. Baptists believe in the Rapture. Unitarian Universalists believe in donuts on Sunday.
Re: The Science of the Benefits of Religion
#70There 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…
I think it’s time to recognize that many of the things you list as bad have a purpose as well and benefits. Remember, organized religion developed in harsh societies were people were always struggling to survive. If you think about a village in Bangladesh, where there is no government with unlimited resources to come save you, imposition of strict rules, suppression of individual preferences, etc., makes sense. What’…
> tight regulation of social behaviors
Yeah, I'll pass on societies so backwards that coming out as gay is a death sentence.
Note that I'm not saying your father's village does this, or that everywhere Islamic/religious/whatever does this, etc. But those strict social mores often come at a heavy cost. The cost is also often competely unnecessary, but nobody is willing to change, because they don't actually understand the reason for the social more. They were just told it was bad as a child and mindlessly propagated it to their children.